Is it a Good Idea for Beta Moderators to Delete Bad Answers Instead of Using the Vote System?

Question

In recent discussion with moderator ArtOfCode of Hardware Recommendations, I was informed that

...this site has overridden [letting votes decide good or bad answers] on Meta, and dictated that answers that don't meet our base quality standard are deleted.

This was later revised slightly to

voting is there for that purpose, except in the situation that a post doesn't meet minimum quality standards. In that case, it is deleted.

This caused some consternation among users, with one immediately thereafter claiming: "Voting is not suspended on closed questions. I will frequently up/down vote closed questions."

I was further informed that this was an official part of our rules set here in Hardware Recommendations. However, that does not appear to be the case. Using the Help Page as my resource, I discovered instead that

voting on questions and answers is the primary mechanism through which the community governs the site on a day to day basis.

Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed.

(note the wording - this is not about the quality of the answer, this is about whether it engages with the question at all - e.g. it even trying).

[> During beta, the community works together to answer seven essential

questions for every Stack Exchange site:

Are questions about {subject} on or off topic? What should our FAQ contain? How should we tag questions about {subject}? Who should the moderators be? What’s the “elevator pitch” for our site? What should our logo and site design look like? How do we promote our site?]4

(nowhere in this list does Stack Exchange suggest the fundamental model of voting may be altered by moderator agreement during beta)

> A lot of the moderation work is mundane: deleting obvious spam, closing blatantly off-topic questions, and culling some of the worst-rated posts on the site. The ideal moderator does as little as possible (nowhere in the description of the moderator's job is it stated that voting may be ignored or not used. In fact the wording is strongly in favor of removing only "the worst-rated posts in the site" - rated using the voting system)

Judiciously limiting your use of moderator powers to selectively prune and guide the community -- now that's the true art of moderation.

(not, say, getting together and deciding to do away with a central site mechanic like voting)

With that context out of the way: fundamentally, the point of this post is to ask whether moderators should be letting the voting system handle whether an answer which is at least trying is good or bad, or whether they ought to just use their own personally judgment in determining whether an answer is bad, and then overriding site-wide policy by deleting it.

(For clarity's sake, but not as part of THIS question, the context of this discussion was that ArtOfCode believed quickly putting on hold off-topic questions was the best way for him to do as little work as possible (a commendable goal as stated above), because it was believed that this would lower the number of bad answers he would have to delete. However, if it is not the case that he should be deleting bad answers, but rather only inappropriate answers or answers already heavily downvoted, then there is - one might presume - less of a reason to quickly close questions that are deemed off-topic.)

Answer 1

Believe it or not, this actually is a responsibility of moderators - to an extent. Your basic question is this:

[Should moderators] be letting the voting system handle whether an answer which is at least trying is good or bad, or [should] they... [use their own] judgment in determining whether an answer is bad, and then [override] site-wide policy by deleting it?

I'm blind to whether a mistake in moderation was made here. I don't know the content of the answer that was removed, and I'm not familiar enough with site policy to know whether this particular case was a mistake in judgement. I'm not saying it was, and I'm not saying it wasn't.

But what I can say is this: Each site decides what sort of content the site wants deleted. It's the role of the moderators to step in and delete content where the community has, in the past, decided it's appropriate to do so.

This may be the source of the misunderstanding. Stack Exchange not only permits, but actively encourages moderators to delete content they feel does not meet the quality standard of the site, and pushes each community to develop a stringent quality standard for that purpose.

You are correct in that voting is the primary method by which the community decides what they see as on-topic and of good quality, but the community isn't always right. Mistakes in quality happen - take that from a Puzzling moderator. It's the moderators' job to step in and delete content, even if it's positively scored, when that content should be removed.

In other words, moderators are human exception handlers. When a problem comes up that a moderator thinks the community at large isn't necessarily handling correctly, they step in. So yes, moderators are explicitly encouraged to override the voting system when it's appropriate to do so - and that can be fractious at times, but that comes with the job.

Whether you feel this is how Stack Exchange should work is a different question - one that's worth asking, and one that I think has a valid answer - but this is how things currently are.

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As an aside, may I suggest taking a step back from your keyboard for a bit? Your comments sound aggressive, and while I'm not trying to invalidate or dismiss what you're saying, it may be better received if you take a moment to cool off and disengage. Let it sit for at least a couple hours, and come back with a clearer head.

Answer 2

To directly answer the only question I see in your post:

Is it a Good Idea for Beta Moderators to Delete Bad Answers Instead of Using the Vote System?

Yes.

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We have a problem with getting questions to be on topic. Our scope is described in the Tour as such:

We've further defined that in What is Hardware?. There are a few minor disagreements on specific "hardware", but overall, the community has decided:

Hardware is any primarily electronic item that can perform more than one task, designed to interface with, connect to, or be, a primary computing platform in day-to-day operation.

A primary computing platform is any primarily electronic item that can perform meaningful tasks on its own with minimal external support, and designed to be operated by a user, consumer or professional.

Now, look at what is on topic. There is a single green check mark. Unfortunately, we continue to receive questions that fall outside of that single check mark.

Our stats for the last 90 days look like this:

Questions Closed: 222
Questions Asked: 416
Close percentage: 53.37 %

We are closing more than half of those are for technical support and one out of five of those closed questions are for being to broad. We've tried preemptive education, we've tossed around other ideas, we've discussed renaming the site and much more. Not much of what we've done has helped to eliminate the problem.

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With that background, we come to your question about deleting answers. Yes, answers are important. Yes, down voting is important. However, even more important is keeping the site clean and high quality.

There are a few ways that deleting these "bad answers" help.

We don't want to provide answers to something that is off topic. Doing so only encourages more questions that we don't support. Closing these questions quickly prevents the answers from appearing. Removing answers further teaches both the person asking the question and the person answering that answering these types of questions is a waste of time.

We want high quality answers that make a recommendation Below are a few answers that I have flagged as either very low quality or not an answer posts and were removed.

• Answer [Screen Shot]

This entire question was closed as technical support and this answer was removed because it is little more than a link. It makes no recommendation at all.

• Both answers [Screen Shot]

One answer is a link to a product with no explanation as to why. The other is a little better saying that their recommendation is "a great drive", but contains no link and the rest of the answer explains "a handy piece of software" (in two sentences...) and then throws in a second recommendation. There is no substance to the answer. It looks like it was removed when the user deleted their account.

• This answer [Screen Shot]

This answer doesn't provide a recommendation. It provides a laundry list of parts the user should put in a new machine. On top of that, it doesn't make any explicit recommendations for any of the items in the list.

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In short, I support the deletion of "bad answers". It helps to keep the site quality high. I'm also hopeful that it will help turn around the trend of off topic questions.

Answer 3

I'm a high rep user here, and a former mod pro tem at software recommendations (which gives me an interesting perspective into the inner workings of a SE recommendations site) and a mod Super User.

I'd like to start by saying SR and HR are in a strange place as far as scope is concerned. Recommendations are explicitly off topic everywhere else on the network. While it was primarily aimed at SR this post by a community moderator explains why quality control is so important on a beta hardware site. The pruning of questions done now helps determine the body of questions new users have to refer to, and avoid "but it was ok then!". What's worth doing is worth doing right to start with. If there's enough traffic and active closevoters the community can handle but the modhammer is a useful tool to help shorten the process loop. The best way to prevent mods from needing to unilaterally hammer things is to close the things that need closing first. Flag em, don't answer em.

If a closure or deletion is disputed, the right way to handle it is to bring it up specifically on meta.

I'd note every 'don't ask about' is a real problem that a moderator has faced.

Answer 4

Moderators are leaders in the community.
Moderators are supported by their community.
Moderators are trusted people in their community.

The most important question I see you raise is this:

fundamentally, the point of this post is to ask whether moderators should be letting the voting system handle whether an answer which is at least trying is good or bad, or whether they ought to just use their own personally judgment in determining whether an answer is bad, and then overriding site-wide policy by deleting it.

Hardware Recommendations Stack Exchange has strict requirements. Any post that does not meet those requirements are subject to action, such as deletion. The voting system has no impact on this.

Moderators have also been carefully appointed by people at Stack Exchange. The community, as well as Stack Exchange, have placed their trust in these people. They are very well respected, not only within Hardware Recs SE, but also other communities within Stack Exchange as well. They know very well how to react to various situations, and, to put it frankly, how to moderate.

There needs to be a realization here that many standards are not in the help center. They are located prominently within the meta site itself. Site policies, Should we have SR quality guidelines have been created by the community. These help define the community, and the framework for building the site.

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There is clearly a misunderstanding on question closure here. For questions that do not meet a certain standard, they are eligible to be closed by various people in the community, including moderators. This is not a problem. If such question is closed, it can always be reopened, once suitable for the site.

Same for answers. If an answer does not meet the standard, it is eligible for deletion. Period. This site is a constructive question and answer site. Not a discussion forum. If you've read the tour page, you would've read this:

This place is for questions and answers. No chit-chat.

The voting system has nothing to do with whether an answer meets the standard. They are independent systems. Do not conflate the two.

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Be Nice.

You clearly disagree with the actions of a member of the community. If you disagree so much that you need to create a post, then perhaps you need to take a break. You can always discuss, but if you are not constructive, you won't ever get anywhere.

Answer 5

Andy's answer has hit the nail on the head regarding your main question; I'm going to address some misconceptions you have.

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Firstly, to clarify my meaning in those two chat messages you quoted:

voting is there for that purpose, except in the situation that a post doesn't meet minimum quality standards. In that case, it is deleted.

Voting is the primary mechanism of determining post quality. However, to be worth comparing a post to other answers on the same question, it has to meet a minimum standard of quality that we have set out here on meta. If it does not meet that standard, it will be deleted, as we also agreed upon. Every post that does meet those criteria is left alone to be voted upon.

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I was further informed that this was an official part of our rules set here in Hardware Recommendations. However, that does not appear to be the case. Using the Help Page as my resource...

The help center is not the only source of official policy; meta is also official policy if the community forms a consensus. As I've said, we've agreed on meta that we should delete posts that don't come up to scratch, so that's the policy I've been enforcing.

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(nowhere in this list does Stack Exchange suggest the fundamental model of voting may be altered by moderator agreement during beta)

Firstly, the Seven Essential Questions meta post is now very outdated and most new communities mostly shun it. There's now the Real Essential Questions FAQ instead.

Secondly, it doesn't have to be in the list to be possible. A community can change almost any aspect of the default Stack Exchange policies by consensus on meta, which is what was used here.

And lastly, this was not done by moderator agreement, but by agreement within the whole community.

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(not, say, getting together and deciding to do away with a central site mechanic like voting)

We haven't done away with it. On the contrary: we've augmented that existing mechanism by deleting answers that don't meet our criteria, which leaves only those answers that are in the same kind of ballpark to be compared by normal voting.

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With that context out of the way: fundamentally, the point of this post is to ask whether moderators should be letting the voting system handle whether an answer which is at least trying is good or bad, or whether they ought to just use their own personally judgement in determining whether an answer is bad, and then overriding site-wide policy by deleting it.

The policy that this site has decided upon is to delete those answers that don't do what we've set out to do here. Therefore, any answer that doesn't meet those standards, whether it's trying or not, will be deleted. Site-wide policy, therefore, is not overridden.

And yes, unilateral deletion of answers is a subjective process - as are most unilateral moderator actions. However, that's just part of being a moderator - diamonds are trusted to take the action that's best for the site; if they get it wrong, anyone in the community can challenge the action and ask for an explanation on meta.