Why is it that perfectly good answers get deleted?

Question

Why is it that certain perfectly good answers get deleted by a few, because they point out Ubuntu's problems? One answer that was deleted is even given in Ubuntu's manual. Another that was deleted was the accepted answer and received 3 up votes when posted in answer to another question. Some people here need to get off their high horse and let others be helped.

Example 1 upgrading to a specific version instead of auotupgrading to the latest stable - the method is given in the Ubuntu help wiki here.

Example 2: work around for when windows keeps putting itself at the head of the boot order (ie poor uefi implementations): method to put grub in the default media path so Uefi boots it and fool windows.this answer often gets voted down and deleted

Example 3: converting to MBR

Example 4: pointing out that distro drivers don't work on certain brands of wifi cards and suggesting a link to get different drivers. One of which was an actual fix for my wifi card.

Answer 1

I'm one of the regular deleters around here, and my high horse is currently in the barn.

Answers are usually only deleted when they are either very low quality or not an answer. For some examples:

The solution to your problem is over on the Ubuntu wiki.

This is not an answer. It's pointing someone to an answer, but it does not actually help anyone. In fact, if the link dies (as is frequent with the Ubuntu Wiki), the answer becomes worse than useless and doesn't help anyone.

Ubuntu sucks at doing [x]. Try using Arch Linux instead.

This is just low quality, and is definitely not an answer. A better explanation would be to show why Ubuntu doesn't support that, and offer a workaround, if any.

See this Ask Ubuntu question for the answer.

Same as link-only. Except, this is even worse, because the questions are likely duplicate and should be flagged as such.

You need to install package xyzzy and run it. It'll fix your problem.

This is a low-quality answer. It doesn't explain how to install or run xyzzy, it just says to do it. This isn't helpful for people in the future.

Whenever I try to run the command mentioned in the accepted answer, I get the following error: {some error log}

This is not an answer. It's another question, and should be treated as such.

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In short, the rule is to delete any answer that either does not actually answer the question, or is so bad that it's nonsensical and irrecoverable through edits. Answer deletions are usually rare, and are reserved for things that either aren't answers at all.

Also, it is important to note that users can delete their own answers as they please. Sometimes, this is valuable in order to remove false/deprecated information. Other times, the answerer had a change of heart.

For more information, I'd advise you read these two articles in our help center (an excellent resource, really), as they might be able to shed some more light on the subject of answer moderation:

• Why and how are some answers deleted?
• How do I write a good answer?

Also note this post over on Meta Stack Exchange.

If you give us actual links, I'd be more than happy to take a look and explain exactly why those answers were deleted - I doubt it was without a reason.

I can tell you right now, however, that there are strict restrictions for deletion. No user except for a moderator or the original poster may (usually) delete an answer with a score greater than zero. If an answer actually deleted by the community, it must have a score less than or equal to zero (usually less than).

Finally, it is important to be aware of Stack Exchange's "Be Nice" policy, and the Ubuntu Code of Conduct. While we are not opposed directly to criticism of Ubuntu, excessive language or direct attacks will not fly. If they can't be edited out of the post, the post will be deleted. The community may, as a whole, decide to delete any post that is factually incorrect, though this is not a steadfast rule.

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For you specifically, here's the advice I can give.

Regarding the upgrade question:

The answer that was deleted is both potentially harmful as well as completely technically incorrect.

There is a very large difference between sudo apt-get update, sudo apt-get upgrade, and sudo do-release-upgrade. In short:

• sudo apt-get update updates your local package cache information
• sudo apt-get upgrade installs the newest versions of the current package for your distribution
• sudo apt-get dist-upgrade or sudo apt full-upgrade installs the newest versions of the current package for your distribution, but also enables APT's intelligent problem resolution. It still will not upgrade you from 14.04 to 16.04 or similar.
• sudo do-release-upgrade upgrades your distribution (14.04 -> 16.04)

The answer also doesn't answer the question at all. OP isn't trying to upgrade to Xenial. They're just trying to install the latest version of a package. In fact, upgrading them to Xenial could do way more harm than good. Furthermore, this would lead to a broken "partial" distribution-upgrade where PPAs are still relying on Trusty packages, which can cause far far more problems.

Regarding the dual-boot question:

Rod Smith sums it up very nicely:

This approach is overly complex and will not work. Windows will install to the existing /dev/sda only in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode, and subsequently cloning that installation to a GPT disk (such as /dev/sdb) will render it unbootable in BIOS mode. You'd need to install an EFI-mode boot loader for Windows -- and if that's the goal, it's easier to install Windows in EFI mode to begin with. That creates complications for Ubuntu, though. In sum, your approach needs significant modifications at best, and when you're done, it'll be a very different procedure.

and:

You may have done something similar on systems with different configurations, such as with everything in BIOS-boot mode or everything in EFI-boot mode; but in this configuration, it will not work.

Put simply, your answer assumes that the system is fully MBR. This is not the case, and as such, your answer will not work. Also, due to the risks of cloning drives, this could cause excessive data loss or otherwise break things in very spectacular ways. Your answer still doesn't mention how to fix the GPT/Legacy split. It just assumes that it does, and therefore doesn't really answer the question or solve the issue.

Similarly, partitions do not carry information about partition types! This information is stored in the partition table, not the partition itself. Moving a MBR partition to a GPT drive makes the partition GPT. Likewise, moving a GPT partition to an MBR drive will make the partition MBR or fail entirely.

Regarding the Windows boot misbehavior question:

This is just downright dangerous. You're replacing core system files with your own versions, which could have adverse effects like breaking Windows entirely. This is known as the "fallback" UEFI path, and is rarely used except on computers with very very bad UEFI implementations. Usually, setting the boot option from BIOS will be enough. Also, that answer is not deleted. Either way, it won't do much, as Windows will just overwrite the bootx64.efi files on next bootloader upgrade.

Regarding the wifi driver question:

This was treated as a link-only answer. You just threw a link to a relatively shady site without explaining what to do or how to do it. As such, it was deleted.

Answer 2

First of all, your answer for the hash sum mismatch question is already been discussed in the comments and mentioned that the method you provide for upgrading isn't proper. The documentation that you point to is for End of Life releases. The question owner's OS is 14.04 and it is not End-of-Life (EOL) status. Thus, your answer was downvoted and deleted properly.

The answer for gpt partition issue is indeed quite complex and convoluted. You might consider revising it. It appears that you have tendency of jumping into answering posts without thoroughly reading them or investigating the causes of the issue, as in the case of rebooting to Ubuntu question.

I know it might seem a bit frustrating and you're going into answering with good intentions, but look at it from this perspective: if your answers receive negative feedback, try to learn what exactly is wrong with your answers and listen to the comments.

Answer 3

The majority of answers that are deleted are done so through review after being flagged as "not an answer" or "very low quality". Kaz's answer explains why most answers are deleted and makes helpful specific comments that I agree with on the issues with the answers you mention.

I would like to add a few words on why some answers are deleted outside of the review system and not by mods, but by voters, as seems to have been the case with two of your examples. I will speak for myself, since I did vote to delete two of those posts.

In general I vote to delete answers that I am convinced are bad advice because I don't want visitors to the site to try to use them and later have problems. I vote to delete answers that I am convinced are not useful because I don't want visitors to land on irrelevant and unhelpful things when looking for an answer.

I think the users like myself who vote to delete outside of the review system (either when we happen to see bad posts or using the extra data available to users with more that 10k reputation) are, in general, interested in making the site more awesome*, by polishing the good parts, patching the parts that need fixing up, and throwing out anything that really doesn't belong.

_{*this is, of course, highly subjective, and meta is here, in part, so we can discuss it and try to find and cultivate a healthy common ground about it.}

It's worth pointing out that the users who commented on the deleted answers you mention are not the ones who voted to delete them (contrary to what WinEunuuchs2Unix suggested). Only a few users regularly vote to delete outside the review system, 20k reputation is required, and the post must have a negative score. Only a handful of answers per week are deleted by voters.

I much prefer to salvage posts by editing than to delete them. Hopefully, I only vote to delete posts that I believe cannot be saved by editing. Some of the other users who vote to delete are also active in salvaging in various ways: editing, voting to reopen, speaking up in comments and in chat on behalf of posts (and users) that deserve better treatment than they are currently getting.

Sometimes, I make mistakes or bad decisions. Recently I came across an answer in the Low Quality Posts review queue. I thought "this doesn't answer the question, the OP is asking for a command" so I clicked the Delete button. Then I thought "oh no I should not have done that" so I went back and tried to fix my mistake by editing the answer to make it clear, especially to other reviewers, that the suggestion could be helpful, although I couldn't upvote it since it was apparently untested speculation. (Although I still think it was an improvement, a mod pointed out that my edit was intrusive as it could make the answer seem condescending - maybe I was making the extra mistake of thinking more about reviewers than the OP and the author of the post).

Other people also make mistakes so even though it takes 3 users with >20k to vote to delete, or 6 with >2k who can only Recommend Deletion within the review queue context (or one mod any time of course), it's possible that a post may be deleted unjustly, and if you feel that has happened to one of your posts you can flag it for moderator attention.

Answer 4

I will be completely honest: Kaz sums up all the deletion reasons nicely in his answer to this question.

Each and every one of the reasons that was stated by Kaz there is accurate, and would reflect my reasoning for deleting the answers, the examples of which you've provided.

Therefore, that answer is basically a duplicate of my explanations in this reason.

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Of more importance is your attitude in this. What one person deems as a 'perfectly good answer', the community and rules of the site may not. This is the nature of Stack Exchange sites, and community "deletion" consensus is actually sometimes a valid tool.

There's simply no need to be rude towards users and tell people to "Get off their high horse".

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Another bigger concern is this: the observation of "dangerous answers" is actually valid. There are a billion ways to provide a 'dangerous' answer. This includes but is not limited to suggesting to run a do-release-upgrade when it's not called for, or installing some random package that might fix the problem without explaining the reasoning for installing it, or how to install it, because that "random package" might introduce disruptive things to the system.

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TL;DR:

You should adjust your attitude here. Deletions aren't in any way directed just against someone, but indicate that you're doing something wrong with your answers and posts. Kaz's answer here gives prime explanations for the deletion examples you've provided, and it would be a good idea to follow those explanations to avoid such answers in the future.

Quality standards such as these are important too - we don't want to tell people things that'll torch their systems, or provide links to things that might go away, nor do we want a thousand duplicate posts. (This is where you flag for closure as duplicates, if the other post is almost identical in terms of what's being asked and an answer over there is valid in both places).

Answer 5

To back up your theory you have included a couple of examples as requested in comments.

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In example 1 your answer did not work for the OP. Additionally the OP's question appears to be a duplicate question of "Hash Sum Mismatch" and I flagged that question as such. Now it's up to the OP to check the duplicate candidate and say "Hey it works" or "No it didn't work and Xxxx happened instead".

Also in your first example you ignored advice in comments from more experienced (in Ask Ubuntu at least) users and got into long arguments. Another point is your answer being too daunting for average Ubuntu users to attempt (in their expert opinion).

In answer example 1 you didn't really "attack Ubuntu" and cannot use that as justification for deletion in your preamble. FYI the apt-get functions are written by Debian which Ubuntu is based upon. Ubuntu also repackages code from Gnome, Linux Kernels, Pulse Audio, Xorg and systemd just to name a few.

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Generally most complaints about Ubuntu can be traced back to Linux Kernel, drivers, or other third party software. Therefore Ubuntu developers can quickly explain the reason for the bug(s) without feeling much guilt or shame.

Those of us that develop software know how complicated the process is and how easy it is for bugs to creep into the code. The important thing around here is to be nice so if answers are mean, rude, abusive, childish, vulgar, insulting, demeaning, condescending, obnoxious, ridiculing, liable, break copyright laws, or any other laws; they will be deleted.

If you meant "Questions are deleted" that's a different story altogether.