Questions tagged [answers]
The answers tag has no usage guidance.
209 questions
37
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3
answers
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Is it possible to ask a Question you already know and answer it
After reading this question: Ought one to answer one's own question? what happens in the case that you know several questions that will further help the community but you want to make the question ...
- 215k
35
votes
2
answers
4k
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PSA: gksu is no longer installed by default
Turns out gksu is no longer installed by default. Some things still depend on it so it might be installed on your system - but on a clean install, it seems it's no longer required. As for why, see: ...
OliMod
- 297k
30
votes
1
answer
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Please do not use links as entire answers!
I have recently noticed a trend going around, and to be perfectly honest it's pissing me off. What new users (and some experience users,) do nowadays is go to the main page, find a question that's ...
- 3,447
29
votes
6
answers
874
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How can we improve the site's answered rate?
According to this our answered rate (percentage of questions with an upvoted answer) is now 76%. We took a big hit with the number of new questions for 12.04/12.10 and the difficulty of being able to ...
- 72.9k
23
votes
3
answers
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What should I do when I find an answer that damages my system but I don't have enough reputation to comment on it?
I found an answer that not only didn't work for me, but it also removed a whole bunch of unrelated stuff that now I now need to find a way to reinstall.
I just want to add a comment under the ...
- 56
23
votes
2
answers
431
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Sorting out SOLVED for good
I came across this question whilst rapidly browsing earlier - the OP added "SOLVED: " to the title, but did add vaguely how they got the answer but did not accept it.
Searching for other people doing ...
- 30.6k
21
votes
1
answer
283
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Is it okay to ask a user to accept an answer for his/her question?
Recently I have seen questions where few good answers were given but no answer was accepted and no comment was left on any answer i.e no activity from the user who asked the question. Is it okay to ...
- 13.1k
21
votes
1
answer
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Please don't flag link-only answers as Very Low Quality
Lately I notice that many link-only (or link-mainly) answers are being flagged as Very Low Quality, so I am taking to meta to ask y'all to use the Not An Answer flag for link-only answer (LOA) posts ...
ZannaMod
- 71.6k
20
votes
2
answers
374
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Editor wars aside, can we use sudo nano when talking to non-experts?
TL;DR: when posting a solution could you please standardize any editors to something that firstly comes with vanilla Ubuntu, and secondly, is simple to use, regardless of your personal preferences.
I ...
- 1
20
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1
answer
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Are we being too generous to (incorrect) answers?
For quite sometime now, I am seeing a very alarming trend here. Wrong/incorrect answers are being upvoted, quite a lot.
I have seen some answers lately, that deserve downvotes without any doubt, but ...
- 93.1k
19
votes
5
answers
859
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Should we unpin the accepted answer from the top of the list?
Community manager Nicholas Chabanovsky has posted this on Meta Stack Exchange:
Unpinning the accepted answer from the top of the list of answers.
On Stack Overflow, apparently, answers are now by ...
ZannaMod
- 71.6k
18
votes
6
answers
326
views
When do comments become answers?
I find myself solving someone's problem step by step through the comments. When I finally find the solution, should I move the final solution to an answer and delete the comment or leave the comment ...
- 3,843
18
votes
2
answers
177
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Should I consider the timeline while accepting an answer?
Assume that, I get an answer to my question that is OK, and i accept it. After a while I get another answer that is seemed to be more OK.
Now what should I do? Should I accept the new answer? If I ...
- 197
18
votes
1
answer
168
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Flag answers that should be comments?
As new users can't comment, they sometimes posts answers that would have been comments if they could. Should we flag them so they can be cleaned up properly, or leave them alone because that's how the ...
- 14.4k
17
votes
4
answers
473
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Biased votes at answers
That's something I have noticed at many questions in this site.
A user with a reputation of 20 has posted a great answer but has not received any up votes.
On the other hand, a user with 5k ...
- 3,850
16
votes
1
answer
212
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Is there an accepted definition of "future proof"?
I was reviewing a question where I noticed that it was recommended to "future proof" older answers. I must admit that even after searching https://meta.askubuntu.com/search?q=future+proof I'm baffled ...
- 36.4k
16
votes
3
answers
599
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Me-too post? Or partial answer?
Where do we draw the line between "I'm having the same problem, too" posts and partial answers?
This answer and its comments are what have motivated me to ask this. But I'm hoping for a ...
- 119k
15
votes
3
answers
240
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What should I do if someone makes a bad edit to my post?
I've been searching to see if this was already asked; sorry if it's a duplicate, couldn't find an answer.
I've been wondering what I should do if someone bad edits my post?
For example, I explain ...
- 490
15
votes
3
answers
561
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If my answer does not solve the OP's question, should I delete it?
I have posted an answer to a question and linked to my own method for solving it on Ubuntu Forums. The OP has subsequently commented that it does not work for his laptop.
Should I delete my answer or ...
- 6,281
15
votes
2
answers
261
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Answering a question using an answer from another post
It occurs to me that I find an answer to one question among the answers to another question, sometimes in the way of hidden gems.
I believe that creating the linkage between the two questions is ...
- 1,561
15
votes
4
answers
293
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How to handle duplicate answers that add nothing?
I'm not talking about exact copying, failure to give credit, or one person passing off another person's answer as their own.
Rather, I'd like to know what the best practice is when one user answers a ...
- 119k
15
votes
3
answers
301
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Comments in the answer section from new users
This addresses all the new users out there:
Every day here I see new users commenting in the answer section and saying things like
I don't have the rep to comment but....
It seems redundant that ...
- 18.8k
15
votes
2
answers
181
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Making users wait to answer their questions hindering a new user's progress?
Ok so SE has this feature that doesn't let new users answer their own questions in like 6 hours or something. While I appreciate that this helps cut down on whatever big-city problems stack overflow ...
- 72.9k
14
votes
2
answers
294
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Can I reuse my own answers outside of Ask Ubuntu?
Suppose one day I woke up and decided "I'm gonna start a blog about Ubuntu" or "I'm gonna write a book about Ubuntu". Over time I've accumulated large amounts of answers, some of which could be ...
- 107k
14
votes
2
answers
334
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Does answering your own question constitute abuse on Ask Ubuntu?
This is my answer to multi-postings of the same or mostly same question. https://askubuntu.com/a/235007/46312 <--since deleted as not to offend
Are we allowed to ask-answer our own questions and ...
- 16.2k
14
votes
1
answer
401
views
Should I flag "me too" answers?
I am seeing a small issue with "me too"s on a few questions, especially common hardware that often has driver issues, like this question. Should this be flagged, commented, or something else?
- 20.8k
14
votes
3
answers
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Should one answer one's own question? [duplicate]
And if one does, is it bad form to then select one's own answer as the preferred one?
Here's the particular case I have in mind:
How do I add a program that must be run from within its own directory ...
14
votes
1
answer
278
views
When are "you can do this different thing instead" answers considered good?
Sometimes someone asks how to do something that is very hard, unlikely to have the intended effects, or fundamentally impossible or meaningless due to an insufficient understanding of what it would ...
- 119k
14
votes
1
answer
445
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How should we handle plagiarized answers?
I see an increasing number of answers that are plagiarized. And, I have mentioned it a couple of times in chat as it seems to bother me quite a bit. I am posting this in meta in order to get a wider ...
jokerdinoMod
- 41.6k
14
votes
1
answer
300
views
I am concerned an answer I gave will mislead others?
A senior community member left a comment stating my answer was incomplete, even though it worked for me when I tested on my machine. The components he stated were missing were actually installed ...
- 9,885
13
votes
3
answers
321
views
Is it ok to comment and see if it works before answer?
Is it ok to comment an answer to the OP because you can't test it, and then you answer if it works? Or should you just answer?
- 3,871
13
votes
2
answers
363
views
Another "why was my answer deleted" looking for advice to be better
I am new to posting questions and answers on SE, although not new to using the various SE resources. I also get the need for questions and answers to be concise and accurate, we all need answers and ...
- 31
13
votes
1
answer
237
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What can be done with duplication of answer
Sometimes I found out on single question One answered and after some time another answer which is very similar to 1st (may with negligible too-minor edit), say duplication of 1st answer!
Which seems ...
- 36.8k
13
votes
2
answers
284
views
How do you research for answers?
I'm curious how folks in the community handle research for complex questions. Typically, I end up with 25 tabs and 3-4 open windows when a question asks something that requires digging across multiple ...
- 107k
12
votes
3
answers
229
views
What should I (or we) do about answers that obviously miss the point of the question entirely?
I came across this answer to “Adobe PDF for Ubuntu 64 bit 15.10” recently. The question is about installing Adobe Reader on recent Ubuntu releases. The answer explains the whole story with the ...
- 36.7k
12
votes
2
answers
233
views
What should I do when answering a question that has already been answered correctly?
I came across a good question the other day and I would like to answer it.
However, somebody else already answered it (and has received upvotes). However, the answer is very general and does not give ...
- 34.4k
12
votes
3
answers
196
views
Hyperlinked answers with no content
I've noticed a lot of questions where an individual has linked to external content to answer a question without bringing in the actual information. Some of these questions, the links are dead (even ...
- 2,460
12
votes
1
answer
178
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If the answerer answers the question in the comments of their answer, should the OP accept that answer?
Let's say the question is:
How do I open Terminal Quickly?
I have been looking for an easy way or short-cut to open the Terminal quickly, so I don't have to find it in the Dash.
And the answerer ...
- 1,698
12
votes
1
answer
130
views
Please consider leaving feedback on votes for new users [duplicate]
I came across this question where two new users had answered and both of them got downvoted.
Now I get why not everyone comments on their votes but I really think if you are dealing with rep 1 users ...
- 18.8k
11
votes
4
answers
260
views
What happens if I think that my answer is more valid than the accepted one?
What happens if I think that my answer is more valid than the accepted one? I don't know if this is my perception, or, effectively, my answer is better. What should I do?
- 8,770
11
votes
3
answers
411
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Ask Ubuntu isn't Code Golf. . . or is it?
There's something that has been bothering me for some time about the response to some answers here on Ask Ubuntu, and came to my attention again on this post. My answer, while working and achieving ...
- 107k
11
votes
3
answers
508
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How to deal with users that won't mark duplicate but instead copy-paste their answers agan and again
I have found some users are just copy-pasting same answers again and again instead of marking them duplicates.
Is this allowed on Ask Ubuntu?
If not, how to deal with such users?
- 8,122
11
votes
1
answer
341
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Two answers on one question by the same user
What is the correct thing to do when someone posts two different answers to the same question?
Here is my example, I am not trying to say "This user did this wrong!", we have only had a couple of ...
- 18.8k
11
votes
4
answers
525
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How to detect AI-generated answers?
AI generated answers are banned from Ask Ubuntu.
But how can I recognise them?
- 5,792
11
votes
1
answer
193
views
When to add another answer instead of updating my current one?
If I click on the Add Another Answer button, a warning pops up:
Are you sure you want to add another answer?
You could use the edit link to refine and improve your existing answer, instead.
When ...
- 69.8k
11
votes
1
answer
297
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What is the policy for dealing with plagiarism?
Over the last couple of weeks there has been a growing number of answers that are unabashed copy/pastes of entire posts from sources around the web. These have generally been pointed out in the ...
- 23.9k
11
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2
answers
772
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Should we unpin the accepted answer from the top of the list on meta?
This is the partner to my other question, concerning specifically Meta Ask Ubuntu. Because accepts may have a somewhat different meaning or purpose on meta I am posting this question to gather ...
ZannaMod
- 71.6k
10
votes
3
answers
181
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What should we do about answers with Link Rot?
Many times users simply post an answer to a question which contains a link to an offsite page with little or no context. When that link breaks, what should the policy be to handle those?
- 48.6k
10
votes
3
answers
311
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What do we do about answers which propose to introduce a blatant security risk?
So, scanning recently edited things, I found an answer to this question here which is accepted but introduces a massive security risk of storing a keyring with no password.
To that end, I have a ...
Thomas WardMod
- 77.1k
10
votes
1
answer
238
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What to do with copy-pasted answers by a new user?
Just now I've opened the main page of the site, and see that a new user has copy-pasted effectively the same text to 3 posts (last two of which are apparently duplicates of each other, since the ...
- 107k