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Sometimes we see developers who use Ask Ubuntu as a platform to annouce their projects. I feel this is a good idea, especially when a project does address an unsolved issue many people have. For example see:

In this case the answer was a link to a GIT project with a Bash script. It is very well documented there, and there is not really much to talk about. I therefore believe we should appreciate the effort even if the answer given was a bit short.

Still, this answer was very quickly downvoted without leaving an explanatory comment. This makes me wonder if we are about to discourage people to give us links to new Open Source projects in general.

If the downvote was just a hasty accident (maybe it was mistaken as spam), then we should still define what projects we do not want to see linked to here (if any).

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  • The user has posted the same answer multiple times: answer1 - I edited this one to bring everything on AU, answer2, answer3, answer4
    – Aditya
    Commented Oct 18, 2013 at 18:52
  • @Aditya: O.o - thats a lot indeed... hmm.
    – Takkat
    Commented Oct 18, 2013 at 20:19

2 Answers 2

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To me, the bottom line has always been:

Does it answer the question?

If the project directly answers the question, I really don't care if the person writing the answer and the person writing the application are one and the same. I don't even care if the person is selling the app.

Now, there are a few things to keep in mind:

  • The person writing the answer ought to mention their affiliation with the project.
  • The answer should clearly explain how the app relates to the question and not simple be a sales pitch.
  • Ask Ubuntu is not a store - no need for unnecessary screenshots and big "buy now" or "download now" buttons or anything like that.
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  • I think that answer was fine but it appeared to have gotten deleted?
    – Jorge Castro
    Commented Oct 19, 2013 at 22:00
  • @JorgeCastro Who deleted it? Did you check it's revision history? The user who posted it posted 4 or 5 duplicate answers, that could be why.
    – Seth
    Commented Oct 20, 2013 at 19:16
  • @Seth - everything has been tidied - where appropriate, Q's have been merged and "non-answers" removed.
    – fossfreedom Mod
    Commented Oct 21, 2013 at 9:01
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I was the one who cast the first downvote, I don't know how many it got since then because the answer is now deleted, but I cast the first one.

Why did I downvote that post? Because I believe an answer should answer the question. This "answer" certainly did not answer the question. The original content of the post simply contained:

enter image description here

This is not an answer. This is:

enter image description here

The help center page for Why and how are some answers deleted? states:

Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are:

  • barely more than a link to an external site

(Emphasis original)

Therefor I downvoted it because this answer is not useful, it would be a useful comment not a useful answer. Although I didn't flag the answer for removal I would have done so if I had thought about it.

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  • 2
    Copy & pasting a script in development to here is to my opinion not helpful either, as we may miss updates or suffer from unfixed bugs if we do so. In this case I feel that linking to an application which answers the question should be o.k. - we do not have to upvote if there was only little content in the answer but the link was at least a bit useful. The "external site" was a GIT repository in this case, not a blog or another Q&A site. I believe this is something different. Now that the answers were merged the issue is probably resolved.
    – Takkat
    Commented Oct 19, 2013 at 6:28
  • @Takkat: The link to github repository is there as it is.. See the answer :-)
    – Aditya
    Commented Oct 19, 2013 at 11:22
  • @Takkat I github repo is no different than a wiki with a script. Actually, it's usually worse. The help section on answering states: Provide context for links... Always quote the most relevant part of an important link, in case the target site is unreachable or goes permanently offline. Basically, this answer in it's original forum does not fall under the definition of "answer". Answers answer the question, not provide links that do.
    – Seth
    Commented Oct 20, 2013 at 19:11

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