Handling very low quality posts?

Question

I've seen a number of very, very low quality and low effort posts appearing on this site recently and I wanted to ask what the best practice around these is?

Should we be editing these until they're actually a constructive question as @LaceySnr - Matt Lacey did here, or should we be flagging them for removal?

My concern with editing them extensively until they're finally somewhat constructive is that it seems to encourage more low content posts by putting new users in the mindset of just throwing things at the site and letting the community moderate it until it's useful.

Answer 1

Thanks for bringing this up. It's a good question.

I think it depends on a question by question basis. If the question has the general information there and it's more of a lack of mastery of the English language that makes the question awkward that an edit would help out then that's obviously fine for an editor to modify it.

Personally, if I understand the question that the person is asking beyond a shadow of a doubt and it interests me to answer it or get someone else to answer it, I would take the time to edit the question. If I don't understand it, I would probably downvote with a comment. Either way I would probably comment about the quality of the question and refer the person to the faq. Repeat offenders would not get that same treatment, though.

That being said, anyone can feel free to vote however they want and the community will work it out.

Original question:

is there any other methof instead of feedobject.adderror()

To add records into object and also wants to give an error at same time when it proceed.

Answer 2

I think downvoting plus commenting on why is effective. There's actually a real success story on this board. I won't name names, but it was someone who started posting fairly dumb questions on the salesforce tag in SO about maybe 6 months ago. Sometimes 5+ questions a day, all one-liners with no context, asking insanely basic stuff that you could answer more quickly with google.

I probably downvoted him 50 times, and a lot of his questions got closed. A lot of them also got comments on how to improve, why they were not good questions. He's still active on this board but is actually a high-quality contributor now, and gives helpful answers to people.

Answer 3

I think that voting to close the questions (downvoting, etc.) is probably more helpful.

Maybe a comment to encourage someone to 'improve' the answer. Although, if they're making a poor quality post in the first place, chances are they aren't going to come back and improve it.

Also @Peter Knolle is right, there is certainly a language barrier for some developers whom are located abroad.

Answer 4

Edit to say: awkwardly the "poor" answer I so cruelly describe in this post has now been removed by one mechanism or another.. feeling bad now!

OP:

I get so frustrated (and have just been so, hence my digging this question up and posting here) about terrible quality answers that have just been rattled out in 30 seconds - but then arn't technically wrong...

This is my example from just now

How can I backup/export my APEX code classes and triggers?

I mean, it is a poor question (and duly commented/presumed downvoted by SDR) but I thought, I can give this person a bit of advice here, I already have my Force.com IDE open, I can talk him through it in 5 minutes, make a difference/help him out etc.etc. - but what do I see as I carefully put together my screenshots and walk throughs "One new answer on this post" - I click to load it and see the alternative answer, less than 3 lines long and not really helping the question asker at all, not even a link to a useful resource (sorry anmrk if you see this.. but it is a poor answer!) - it's technically correct; there is nothing wrong about it, but I'd like to think, side by side with my rich and proud answer (!!) it looks a bit, limited.

I take great pride in composing my answers, that is the whole point of the SFSE for me, but I think the SFSE is often one of the worst SO's for super-short or dismissive answers. I don't want to flag or downvote them (mostly because I'm a wimp) but is that what we should be doing? Would you say that answer should get a downvote?!

Answer 5

I think the best way is to ask the questioner to elaborate the problem clearly with screenshots[if necessary]. Editing or down voting the question neither help the community nor the questioner because only the questioner will have the proper understanding of what's wrong with his code or functionality. If there is serious spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes and irrelevant tags added to the question that leads to misunderstanding of the problem then its ok to edit the question. Down voting can be given only to wrong answers and not to questions.