Questions tagged [answers]

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37 votes
3 answers
660 views

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 ...
Luis Alvarado's user avatar
35 votes
2 answers
4k views

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: ...
Oli's user avatar
  • 293k
29 votes
1 answer
6k views

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 ...
David's user avatar
  • 3,367
28 votes
6 answers
871 views

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 ...
Jorge Castro's user avatar
  • 71.7k
23 votes
3 answers
519 views

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 ...
Paparazio's user avatar
23 votes
2 answers
428 views

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 ...
Wilf's user avatar
  • 30.2k
21 votes
1 answer
279 views

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 ...
binW's user avatar
  • 13k
21 votes
1 answer
367 views

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 ...
Zanna's user avatar
  • 70.4k
20 votes
2 answers
367 views

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 ...
Cuchul's user avatar
  • 1
20 votes
1 answer
358 views

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 ...
heemayl's user avatar
  • 91.6k
19 votes
5 answers
850 views

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 ...
Zanna's user avatar
  • 70.4k
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 ...
AlwaysTalkingAboutMyDog's user avatar
18 votes
2 answers
176 views

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 ...
Kawsar Ahmed's user avatar
18 votes
1 answer
168 views

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 ...
Egil's user avatar
  • 14.2k
17 votes
4 answers
472 views

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 ...
dlin's user avatar
  • 3,830
16 votes
1 answer
211 views

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 ...
Elder Geek's user avatar
16 votes
3 answers
594 views

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 ...
Eliah Kagan's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
236 views

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 ...
kek's user avatar
  • 490
15 votes
3 answers
555 views

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 ...
Carl H's user avatar
  • 6,161
15 votes
2 answers
260 views

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 ...
XavierStuvw's user avatar
  • 1,441
15 votes
4 answers
282 views

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 ...
Eliah Kagan's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
298 views

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 ...
Mark Kirby's user avatar
  • 18.5k
15 votes
2 answers
179 views

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 ...
Jorge Castro's user avatar
  • 71.7k
14 votes
2 answers
294 views

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 ...
Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy's user avatar
14 votes
2 answers
328 views

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 ...
Ringtail's user avatar
  • 16.1k
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?
nanofarad's user avatar
  • 20.7k
14 votes
3 answers
740 views

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
274 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 ...
Eliah Kagan's user avatar
14 votes
1 answer
440 views

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 ...
jokerdino's user avatar
  • 41.3k
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 ...
stephenmyall's user avatar
  • 9,855
13 votes
3 answers
312 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?
fosslinux's user avatar
  • 3,811
13 votes
2 answers
361 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 ...
Jools's user avatar
  • 31
13 votes
1 answer
237 views

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 ...
Pandya's user avatar
  • 35.7k
13 votes
2 answers
283 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 ...
Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy's user avatar
12 votes
3 answers
222 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 ...
David Foerster's user avatar
12 votes
2 answers
231 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 ...
Kaz Wolfe's user avatar
  • 34.1k
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 ...
Brandon Bertelsen's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
178 views

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 ...
Mochan's user avatar
  • 1,688
12 votes
1 answer
129 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 ...
Mark Kirby's user avatar
  • 18.5k
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?
0x2b3bfa0's user avatar
  • 8,770
11 votes
3 answers
409 views

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 ...
Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy's user avatar
11 votes
3 answers
503 views

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?
Alex Jones's user avatar
  • 7,980
11 votes
1 answer
337 views

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 ...
Mark Kirby's user avatar
  • 18.5k
11 votes
4 answers
338 views

How to detect AI-generated answers?

AI generated answers are banned from Ask Ubuntu. But how can I recognise them?
nobody's user avatar
  • 5,387
11 votes
1 answer
191 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 ...
pomsky's user avatar
  • 68.3k
11 votes
1 answer
294 views

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 ...
matigo's user avatar
  • 22k
11 votes
2 answers
768 views

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 ...
Zanna's user avatar
  • 70.4k
10 votes
3 answers
179 views

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?
Marco Ceppi's user avatar
  • 48.1k
10 votes
3 answers
309 views

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 Ward's user avatar
  • 74.4k
10 votes
1 answer
238 views

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 ...
Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy's user avatar

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