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Questions tagged [answers]

Anything related to posting answers, e.g. about improving their content, voting on answers, editing others' answers, etc.

82 votes
4 answers
24k views

How do I recommend software in my answers?

I have a piece of software that I would like to recommend as a solution to problems. I'm trying to avoid answering with "link only" answers, and so I need help on how I can answer valid ...
James Mertz's user avatar
  • 26.4k
33 votes
7 answers
938 views

Is "It's impossible" a valid answer, or is it a comment?

Sometimes you can see a question like How to do <something> in <some program>, asking for advice how to replicate a feature of competitive program or how to do something that OP expects to ...
gronostaj's user avatar
  • 57.4k
32 votes
2 answers
570 views

Old questions - system discourages answering them?

I've been a member on other SE sites for a while now, but only recently joined SU. I found a few things a bit different here, and there are a couple of things I think could use some discussion. 1. ...
Adrien's user avatar
  • 1,275
29 votes
6 answers
583 views

Old posts and answers need protection?

As member of SU for more than 5 years, I have quite a number of old answers lying around. Some of them are so old and outdated that today they are just ridiculous, such as recommending the ...
harrymc's user avatar
26 votes
4 answers
517 views

Recommending own products

What's our stance on relevant product recommendations? The paragraph in the FAQ is clearly not enough in this case. As a recent example, a developer of an Outlook plug-in/addon started answering ...
Daniel Beck's user avatar
  • 111k
26 votes
2 answers
301 views

Should answers suggesting a tool that is no longer available be flagged?

While reviewing a different answer to the same question, I noticed this answer: The answerer is providing a solution using a software they wrote themselves, but the link to that software has gone ...
Worthwelle's user avatar
  • 4,708
22 votes
1 answer
484 views

Two long answers disagreeing with each other - how to canonicalize?

Someone posted a new answer to a rather old question of mine, Disadvantages of partitioning an SSD?. The answer I accepted has 13 upvotes at this time, and I have accepted the information therein as ...
MarioDS's user avatar
  • 1,612
21 votes
5 answers
843 views

User tries to do something forbidden by license. Is explaining why it's illegal an answer?

Specifically, I'm speaking about this question: Windows 10 License in UEFI. Long story short, OP currently uses Windows with a license provided by his university through DreamSpark. He's going to move ...
gronostaj's user avatar
  • 57.4k
21 votes
5 answers
1k views

Are purely non-technical answers to technical problems on-topic?

I edited this question yesterday as part of a cleanup spree. It had already gotten a fair bit of activity, but someone tweeted a link to it after I edited it, and things really took off. The topic of ...
Pops's user avatar
  • 8,503
20 votes
2 answers
263 views

Question in close queue is marked as duplicate, but the duplicate is terrible!

Recently I was looking through the close votes review queue when I came across this question, and it was flagged as a duplicate of this question. These two questions really are exact duplicates of ...
Wes Sayeed's user avatar
  • 13.9k
19 votes
3 answers
454 views

When is an answer eligible to be flagged as "not an answer"? What to do?

When I am flagging answers I read This was posted as an answer, but it does not answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether. This is very ...
Tamara Wijsman's user avatar
18 votes
4 answers
469 views

Is it rude to answer a question that has been solved in comments?

In this question Make system sounds louder than device A couple different people helped the OP discover the solution to his problem in comments. In cases like this, is it best to just suggest to ...
user avatar
18 votes
1 answer
281 views

Promotional text in answer

On this answer, there is a text and link that seems like promoting a service from the user. The answer itself seems good. It does not disclose its affiliation, though, although can be inferred from ...
Vylix's user avatar
  • 1,754
18 votes
2 answers
436 views

What should we do with answers that are low quality but otherwise legitimate attempts to answer the question?

In my extensive time on the review queues and 10k tools, there's one thing that's always been bothering me: low-quality answers that consist of no more than a few sentences and often a link to ...
bwDraco's user avatar
  • 46.2k
18 votes
4 answers
306 views

Show your Excel results

I see a lot of Excel questions, but also ones involving command lines, batch files, and other similar scripts, that entail some mental challenge. I'm not referring to ones where a novice needs some ...
fixer1234's user avatar
  • 27.5k

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