Moderating criteria, acording to the moderating criteria

Question

1) I know you guys are the expert in moderating your forum and I am sure you have seing this question thousands of times

https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/45988/what-are-the-best-tools-for-graphic-designing

The automatic response says: "Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience"

This is no the math forum. It is user experience based. Even a theorical phisics forum it is full of theories!

2) The second part related to my answer. "but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise"

Is it not a fact that there are some good free tools, inkscape, gimp scribus? Yes it is a fact.

Can I link to a reference? Yes I linked to the original developers site, yes there are many questions on the same forum of people using the tools.

Specific expertise, yes I have sometime used them.

Is my answer:

• commentary on the question or other answers? - No

• asking another, different question? - No

• “thanks!” or “me too!” responses? - No

• exact duplicates of other answers? - No

• barely more than a link to an external site? - No

• not even a partial answer to the actual question? - No

3) I was reading some criteria on how a beta forum pass the test, I do not remember the exact link but said that the forum needed to motivate the participation of people. 2.5 answers per question is a good average.

And it is simply. If it is a good answer, vote for it and it goes up, as simple as that.

I have noticed some actual answers just posted as coments. Are people just getting afraid of taking time to just answer, in his (her) opinion? Couse some one are going to delete it? Or vote down? Why it is safer to just make a coment?

Some questions have no answers, just some coments.

4) Guys. This is an iteresting forum. I started to participate just some days ago, couse i like the intelectual challenge. My reference was reading stack overflow looking for answers. I can not answer there becouse it is not my field of expertise.

I really don't care (much) if the answer should stay or blown up into oblivium.

I know you want the best answers, and the best questions, but this is not the Encyclopaedia Britannica, yes, it is opinion based, yes if some one has the opinion that it is a good answer, vote.

Deleting answers and voting down, it is also opinion based. Do that but realy meditate on it before pressing the butons.

Althoug stack overflow thrend is going up, the overall one is that this form of comunication is going down.

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F01r257%2C%20stack%20overflow&cmpt=q&tz=

That is the macro tendency, the micro tendency is that if "power users" don't encourage people to participate, both (tendency) are the same.

I have not seing an "on hold" question corrected or edited. Probably the user just googled it better.

This is just my opinion based... opinion.

A happy face for you :o)

Answer 1

The linked question is way too broad. Even if you remove the "best" aspect, we still do not want to encourage these types of "list" questions that could never definitively be answered.

Assuming Gaurav is at the beginner level, surely he does not intend to seek out tools for every aspect of graphic design (it's quite a broad field!). Scott's post does a great job illustrating how this type of question could be salvaged. The asker needs to state specifically what they are trying to accomplish so that we can accurately and effectively help them.

Sure, your answer may have been helpful, but it was not deleted to punish you. Let's say Gaurav does edit his post to focus it on a specific area of graphic design, perhaps font design. Well, now your answer is completely invalid, none of those tools you listed are the best for designing fonts.

We delete answers in these situations because they allow the question to stick around indefinitely. A closed question that has an upvoted answer will never be automatically deleted by the system. We do not want these types of questions to linger around the site, and at the same time we want to give the user a chance to edit and improve their question. So deleting answers is how we handle this.

It may be confusing or frustrating at first, but as you get comfortable with the site you will begin to recognize what types of questions are and aren't on topic. So if you see a low quality question like that in the future, it's best to just avoid giving an answer and instead flag it as off topic.

Answer 2

A good tool to visually design graphical user interfaces for iOS devices?

Which graphic design application should I learn after Photoshop and Illustrator?

Recommendations for designing tiled maps

What software is best for GUI design?

What application do most designers use to design websites?

Which is better for icon design: vector graphics or raster graphics?

Software recommendations for magazine layout?

What are some essential tools I need to start school?

Tips and resources for beginning designers

How much software experience do I need to be a well-rounded graphic designer?

What free/open source image design programs can you recommend?

If the question were narrowed, even the slightest, there are multiple answers here. The fact that that particular question was exceptionally broad and there's no way for anyone here to know what type of design the asker was referring to... it was rightfully closed.

Questions need to show some effort. That question clearly shows zero effort.

Realize that poor questions, with answers remain on the site. So, removal of an answer to a very poor question could be done so that the question will drop off the site eventually. I'm only speculating here since I have no control over deleting answers directly. However, if a question is just poor, as that one was, you better serve the community by voting to close and not answering.

Answer 3

I think you're missing the purpose of the SE model and that is a well formulated question that can in fact be answered. That said those questions will never have an answer that will serve:

1) accuracy over a given time 2) not be opinionated 3) and a simple straight forward answer that would not be very lengthy

Said that i look at several criteria factors before i close the question:

1) age of the question 2) how many views 3) the user posting 4) the user's profile on SE 5) vote factor given time length 6) can the question show validation in years to come 7) is it a good fit

In regards to the answers to closed questions: 1) if the question is closed and the answer has no votes it is typically removed over time 2) if the question is a duplicate i encourage the answeree to post their answer on the other question which seldom happens 3) if the question is unclear the answer is removed until the questioner can make an approiate edit. If the questioner makes an edit i try to reach out to the answeree and let them know.

Answers in comments are not allowed and i try to remove them. If people are posting answers in comment you're only hurting the community and encouraging new users to be lazy and not researching or trying to make an edit.

In regards to the question you linked to we have several old ones. I could see it being worthy if it had merit and an argument or just a simple level of ability. Even an argument of i saw this post talk about this but these features are what im looking for, are there any programs like this and that is much better then what is present.

Also a one to two line question i believe has never served quality results in a GRADUATED SE site. Ive seen plenty on sites in beta and we do have some questions like that for software but as stated those will produce accurate answers.

Answer 4

Not exactly an answer to your question, but a counter question to make you think:

Should we be forced to keep a question that violates our scope, guidelines or requirements, just because you answered it?

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^{Hint: The point of getting rid of some questions completely is so that users don't arrive on them and go on to post similarly undesirable questions.}

Answer 5

Regarding "best"

It is my observation, and thus opinion, that best software/technique questions are questions that only have opinionated answers. Reason being that:

1. Only best a person can recommend is the persons opinion. If there truly existed a clearly best solutions for something we would all be using this one best thing. Since there exists many comparable solutions that rules out best because now you can debate the fact.
2. Best is the sum of all things, even a comparatively bad thing can be best if its accompanied with other factors. Eg. Photoshop may be unoptimal in many ways but its most widely used so its most supported. Compatibility is much much more valuable than one small piece of better workflow.