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I just had this question to review in the late answers queue. It turned out to be an audit, which is all well and good.

But according to the post time mouseover, it was posted at

2016-10-16 16:57:29Z

The question it was supposedly answering was posted at

2016-10-16 16:48:39Z

Now, before this review, I wouldn't have exactly considered 8 minutes and 50 seconds to be very late for an answer here. I understand that the audits will mess with the times and other stats about posts, but, in this case, those times agree with the actual question, and the comment that the answer was converted to.

Now, the answer itself, being what appears to be the user's first answer here certainly belongs in a review queue, but I would think the First Posts queue would make more sense. And given the contents of the answer and what happened to it, using it in audits makes sense, too, but again, as a First Post audit, not a Late Answer audit.

Is this as intended, or might it indicate a bug, possibly in the Late Answers definition, the Late Answers audit mechanism, or the post time tracking mechanism?

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    If this is intended, I'd like to propose handing out Necromancer badges to people who manage to bring a question back from the dead by giving a good answer a whole hour after it was posted. Revival might be good after 30 minutes, and we should probably set up a gold badge (Lich? Lord of the Dead? Scribe of the Dead?) for those who answer and entire day later... :)
    – 8bittree
    Commented Oct 19, 2016 at 17:27

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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The answer was posted at 16:57, then converted to a comment. Regardless...

The point of the Audits are to make sure you're actually reading the questions, and looking for clues. You've done that, so this edit was a success.

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Now, before this review, I wouldn't have exactly considered 8 minutes and 50 seconds to be very late for an answer here.

The audit system is automatic. The audit system pulls from answers and questions that have been deleted (and of course other sources)

I understand that the audits will mess with the times and other stats about posts, but, in this case, those times agree with the actual question, and the comment that the answer was converted to.

You describe the problem with the automated audit system.

Now, the answer itself, being what appears to be the user's first answer here certainly belongs in a review queue, but I would think the First Posts queue would make more sense.

The audit in this case, is about an answer to an existing question, which was submitted other than the current day.

Is this as intended, or might it indicate a bug, possibly in the Late Answers definition, the Late Answers audit mechanism, or the post time tracking mechanism?

If my understanding of the audit system is correct. This wouldn't be considered a bug. You have to understand an answer is never actually purged. The answer currently exists literally as a comment at this point.

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  • So the audit selects posts based simply on whether the answer was posted today or not, with no regard to when the question was posted? I do understand that answers are (almost) never actually purged, but that just seems to imply that the audit has the information available to determine if a post makes sense as a late answer audit.
    – 8bittree
    Commented Oct 19, 2016 at 18:18
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    "So the audit selects posts based simply on whether the answer was posted today or not" - I don't know. The audit system is not documented for obvious reasons.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Oct 19, 2016 at 19:27
  • Hmm, fair enough.
    – 8bittree
    Commented Oct 19, 2016 at 19:29

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