Timeline for How do you write a Stack Exchange answer?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 17, 2020 at 9:43 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
|
|
| S Jul 27, 2018 at 4:48 | history | suggested | FoxElemental | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Copyediting. Also, I think you meant to say "solution working," since this was an example of what works on Writing (in comparison to code on SO)
|
| Jul 25, 2018 at 16:13 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jul 27, 2018 at 4:48 | |||||
| Jul 25, 2018 at 4:48 | comment | added | corsiKa | @Joe Fastest Gun In The West. | |
| Jul 25, 2018 at 4:40 | comment | added | Joe | @corsiKa What the heck is FGIWT? I looked in an acronym database and on the web in general and didn't find anything. | |
| May 16, 2018 at 6:28 | comment | added | Matt Ellen | I down voted this answer because it is not about how to write a good answer, it is about how to get rep. It's like answering "how do I make the world a better place" by saying "be born rich". | |
| Feb 22, 2018 at 10:00 | comment | added | clabacchio | Sadly, there is truth in this answer, but I don't believe it's fit for a question posted on Writers.SE. If the question was on Meta then it would be appropriate. -1 | |
| Feb 22, 2018 at 0:02 | comment | added | Matthew Read | Being quick to answer is useful to those who need answers; it need not be cynical. Experts also appear to be experts, by and large, and end up accruing rep by virtue of their expertise. I can't disagree that opinion-based SE sites have some extra challenges, but that's far from unique to SE -- I'm not sure that anywhere does it much better, and it's easy to find places that combine all of these things in much worse ways (e.g., Quora). This answer could maintain its points without the bias, and would benefit from it. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 20:53 | comment | added | KRyan | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 20:52 | comment | added | Todd Wilcox | @KRyan Interesting. I stand corrected. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 20:42 | comment | added | KRyan | @ToddWilcox Its founders appear to disagree with you, as does Meta SE. The tag is specifically geared towards questions about how to make the gamification aspect of SE work better, to promote more quality and to avoid promoting any abusive behavior. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 20:39 | comment | added | Todd Wilcox | @KRyan When I read the SO article on what SO/SE is all about, I read completely differently from you. In it, the votes are not characterized as rewards to the person writing the answer, the votes are there as metrics on the quality of the answers for later readers to use to find the best answer (as determined by the community of voters). The intended use of SE answers is actually that users who have more information would actually edit good answers to make them better, not to add their own competing answers. I don't think this is meant to be a game at all. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 20:23 | comment | added | KRyan | (Relevant xkcd, but note it includes profanity in relatively-large type.) | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 20:22 | comment | added | KRyan | @ToddWilcox Frankly, SE is an attempt to intentionally gamify answering questions. People attempting to game the system are literally doing what is expected of them. Gamification only works if the ways to succeed at the game involve performing the desired behavior to the desire level of quality—that is, that maximizing points means maximizing the quality you’re offering. If that isn’t the case, and people can game the system in abusive ways, that user may be a mild problem but the systemic problem is far more severe. Supposedly, the system avoids that. If you think it doesn’t—meta. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 20:11 | comment | added | Todd Wilcox | I downvoted this answer because we don't want cynical answers designed to do nothing more than get upvotes. We want the best answers possible from people who actually know. I hope and believe that the asker of this question was looking for how to write quality answers, not how to write answers that get votes. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 20:03 | comment | added | KRyan | As an addendum, I would say that this answer is a pretty damning statement about any SE where these things by-and-large are true. That suggests that questions are not sufficiently focused and narrowed to be meaningfully, authoritatively answered, that there isn’t enough clarity for voters to decide what is or isn’t a good answer, and so on. If you have a situation where every answer is roughly equally-deserving of an upvote, voting tends to be dominated by other concerns—order they’re read in, reputation of answerer—than their content. So if that happens a lot, something is wrong. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 19:51 | comment | added | KRyan | While this is true to a large extent, I think the complete repudiation of the SE model is a big over-cynical. After all, I don’t think Stack Exchange has been as successful as it has been—as go-to as it is in many fields—because the model doesn’t work. I have seen many late, contrary answers go on to considerable success—it does happen. And if it doesn’t happen often, well, there usually is a reason a lot of people are thinking one way. A system in which outliers succeed often suggests a system that isn’t working very well. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 17:02 | comment | added | Andrew | Excellent answer. Should drive a spike through many peoples' brains. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 15:34 | comment | added | corsiKa | This is almost identical to a draft of an answer I had. It's mostly true. FGIWT, Group-think, both are prime strategies for farming rep. | |
| Feb 21, 2018 at 2:48 | comment | added | Monica Cellio | @F1Krazy remember that users can delete their own accounts, and there's no waiting period if their rep is low. | |
| Feb 20, 2018 at 20:32 | comment | added | SFWriter | I do agree with this user! :-) However, I have yet to find a site where published authors interact with aspiring novelists to hammer things out. And, I would be surprised if anyone relies strictly on SE to learn to write! but like many things, if you take a broad enough survey and see certain themes again and again, you might decide to incorporate the consensus into your work. There is no obligation to keep it. | |
| Feb 20, 2018 at 20:10 | comment | added | F1Krazy♦ | Within nine minutes of this being posted, the user's account was deleted, or so it would seem to me. Curious. | |
| Feb 20, 2018 at 20:02 | review | First posts | |||
| Feb 20, 2018 at 20:12 | |||||
| Feb 20, 2018 at 19:59 | history | answered | user29733 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |