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I've noticed several times people posting the first Google result, or a Wikipedia copy-and-paste, for a not-very-useful answer. For example I asked How long is Kai's brace cable and how does he carry it?, and got a Wikipedia paste (the article itself is unsourced) amounting to "no one knows" as an answer.

But I'd already read this article, and found that it didn't say, which is why I asked here in the first place. "I don't know" is not a particularly good answer unless it comes from an authoritative source like the writer. "I don't know" is not made a better answer by making it "I don't know, and neither do Wikipedia or Google" - well of course not, if those resources could tell me the answer the question wouldn't be acceptable in the first place!

If our policy is "if Google answers the question, it's a bad question" shouldn't a similar policy hold for answers of this type? "If Wikipedia doesn't know, that's not an excuse to never know"?

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    I vehemently disagree with any standard that bases the quality of a question (or worse, its "general reference"-ness) on the first few results in Google. Google is not general reference. Yes, you should research questions before asking them, and yes, you should make note of that research in the question; but there can be many, many reasons why those first results on Google turn out to be utter garbage.
    – Martha
    Commented Mar 15, 2012 at 14:03
  • @Martha: If you vehemently disagree, maybe you should open a meta topic about it. A comment on a related issue is perhaps the weakest form of disagreement allowed on SE.
    – user1030
    Commented Mar 15, 2012 at 14:10
  • I have opened a meta topic about it, just not on this meta. :)
    – Martha
    Commented Mar 15, 2012 at 14:16
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    Joe - your understanding is wrong. Being one of the first hits on Google is an indicator that the question is possibly bad/General Reference, but is is not proof and is not a sufficient criteria for closing as such. As an example, see "E.T. and Star Wars" - while someone did accuse my answer to be simply a rehash of Wiki (which is one of the first Google hits), that didn't make my answer Wiki copy/paste and thus the question a poor one. The answer was a couple-hour-long synthesis and massaging of a variety of sources, some on Wiki some on not.
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Commented Mar 15, 2012 at 14:34
  • ... for a much more cogent set of reasoning against using Google as sufficient reason, see Gilles' answer on MetaSFF or meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/2374/…
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Commented Mar 15, 2012 at 14:37
  • I've removed the first paragraph entirely because I really don't care about the debates over what is or is not GF or if GF questions should be a close or downvote and it's just leading to derailing comments. My concern is entirely about whether we want to encourage similar rules - whatever those may be - for answers. Obviously one can use Wikipedia to research a good answer - what I'm concerned about is answers that invoke only Wikipedia (or other far-removed sources) to provide a "non-answer."
    – user1030
    Commented Mar 15, 2012 at 16:32

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You're more likely to avoid this kind of answers if you say what research you've done in your question: “I read the Wikipedia article, which is unconclusive. Can fans do better?”

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    Except any question that is answered by the primary Wikipedia article is supposed to get downvoted as unresearched. So do we have to start all questions that way?
    – user1030
    Commented Mar 14, 2012 at 22:29
  • Problem is "unknown" may in fact be the right answer
    – Ashterothi
    Commented Mar 14, 2012 at 23:16
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    @Pyrodante: But "I don't know and Wikipedia doesn't know" are not great evidence for "The answer is actually and forever unknown." (If it were, then "We don't know" becomes an acceptable answer to almost everything on the site.) An interview with Lex Gigeroff saying "We never really figured out or cared how long the brace was" - That's a good "We don't know" answer. Or a summary of episodes where he uses it long distance and reasonable estimates of those distances, that's good original research.
    – user1030
    Commented Mar 14, 2012 at 23:26
  • @Pyrodante: The interview with Glen Larson in your own scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/11257/… is an example of a good "Unknown" answer.
    – user1030
    Commented Mar 14, 2012 at 23:29
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An "answer" that just says "I don't know" (with no references or support) should be flagged as not an answer. Fortunately, most answerers know better than that; unfortunately, this leads to pesky shades of gray.

If it's a case of mistaking absence of evidence for evidence of absence — for example, if the answerer has obviously done exactly the same research as the asker, but unlike the asker has concluded that this is the end of the story — then I think a downvote is in order.

I agree that the only satisfactory "we don't know" answer is one that has support for why we can't ever know, e.g. a Word-of-God explanation.

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Your remedy for poor answers is to downvote them, preferably with a comment explaining why you think they are poor so that the answerer can improve them if so minded to do.

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  • In my experience, downvoting answers without a clear link explaining site policy has lead to retaliatory downvoting. This has happened to me a dozen times on SO (to the point I hardly ever explain why anymore), as well as less often on gaming, gamedev, and once here. That's why I'm looking for some kind of consensus.
    – user1030
    Commented Mar 15, 2012 at 16:42
  • My suggestion would be to rely on others to downvote answers to questions you have also answered. The whole point of the voting system is that the community gauges the quality of the answers. That isn't and shouldn't be the job of the mods, who should concern themselves with the quality of the questions.
    – Christi
    Commented Mar 15, 2012 at 16:45
  • Rarely is it questions I've answered. Sometimes it is questions I've asked. Usually it is questions asked by someone else that I also had, and I find an answer unsatisfactory. In response they mass-downvote old questions/answers (especially questions since those are now free). Sometimes the serial downvote detector catches it. Sometimes it doesn't. I don't usually go back and check, either way it's immature and saddening.
    – user1030
    Commented Mar 15, 2012 at 16:49
  • I can see that's infuriating, but I suggest that the site as a whole loses out when you don't have the courage of your convictions. Enough good answers and it all comes out in the wash anyway.
    – Christi
    Commented Mar 15, 2012 at 18:03

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