Questions tagged [answers]
The answers tag has no usage guidance.
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Pseudo-answers are the enemy
Pseudo-answers are partial answers, which are mere speculation or irony or an addition to someone else's answer.
Pseudo-answers do, sometimes, make great contribution to the thread. However, Physics ...
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Increase weight of downvotes?
I am newer to the SE community so forgive any naivete. I suspect this is a recurring issue, but I regularly come across users whose reputation continually increases despite many incorrect, or ...
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Does reputation correlate with the question-to-answer ratio?
Reputation is a rough measure of a user's experience with the site. It can also be used as a (not very accurate) proxy for their overall expertise in physics.
Our user population consists of people ...
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Why isn't bad content downvoted and commented on enough
In SE sites other than SO, there is a less strict "policy". Less down-votes, easier to up-vote, more "caring" people.
Good:
There is a big upside for an SE site to being less strict:
it promotes ...
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Re: Downvoting with no feedback
I have tried very hard to comply with the spirit of this forum but obviously still have not got the hang of it. I write a short comment and then am told it should be an answer.
I answer a question ...
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Is it encouraged to write an answer to your own question if it is just a summary of the comments?
I recently asked a question on how the uncertainity principle applies to a situation described there. There have been some comments, which, I think are at least partial answers. I commented that and ...
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The practice of answering a question in its comments area
I've noticed that some members provide a perfectly good answer to a perfectly good question in the comments area under the question rather than posting their response as a standalone answer.
As this ...
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How do you cite yourself?
In this answer I cited some work I did a while ago.
To what extent should we allow self-linking? I have noticed in some cases there is self-linking that is only tangentially related to the ...
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How should I ask a question to understand the answer I will get?
I'm very curious and like to understand physical concepts. So I search the internet and ask questions on the site.
But there is a problem: my understanding isn't complete about the subject ...
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How to promote “hidden gems”
Upvote mechanism does not always work on this site.
I often see great answers with zero votes that are unaccepted.
This is what tends happens:
Spend significant amount of time adding an answer
In ...
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Opt-in to be always pingable to answer questions
Original idea: List of users with specialities who are willing to be pinged--should we do this?
This is a place where users can opt in to be pinged by other users regardless of their chat status.
...
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Can we do better at reducing bike-shedding?
"Bike-shedding" is a phenomenon where there is excessive discussion of a topic because it seems easy, so everyone feels that they are competent to discuss it. We seem to have a couple of recent ...
user4552
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Does it matter if answers are correct?
I'm struggling a little bit with this site and I think I'm starting to put my finger on why. Physics is about the nature of reality, there must be (at some level) a way to say something is ...
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Good answers to duplicate questions
I had a decent answer that received upvotes to a question that was later closed as a duplicate.
Since the answer was well received, I thought it would be good to post it to the original question.
I ...
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Is the Stack Exchange reputation point system discouraging?
How should I feel about the Stack Exchange reputation point system?
I am new to the Physics Stack Exchange site as a contributor. I try to answer questions that I am sure that I know the answer of. I ...
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Is it okay to edit your answer to make it better after seeing some point that is addressed in another answer or is this bad etiquette/stealing?
Let's say i have written an answer to a question. I feel like i have done a good job of answering it and covered all the points that needed to be covered.
Now, if i see some another answer that i feel ...
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Should we leave super wrong highly downvoted posts visible or should we delete them?
This answer (10K only; screenshot) is an example of a "super wrong" post. For the purposes of this discussion, a "super wrong" post is an answer which not only is factually incorrect but is incorrect ...
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Getting a better understanding of how and why off-topic homework-like questions get answered before they can be closed
Background
This is a follow-up to What happened with the experiment to lower the vote-to-close threshold?. (See that thread, and the initial proposal here, for background.) The experiment is currently ...
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"You did the measurement wrong" is not an answer
I've seen two hot network questions in the past two days where one of the highly upvoted answers was a variation on "you did your measurement wrong". In both cases, this answer was ...
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Why was my recent answer deleted, and was it really an appropriate action?
I recently asked and answered a question on the main site: What are the Energy eigenstates for a modified quantum harmonic oscillator?
First of all, this question ended up being re-tagged as homework,...
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How should we deal with upvoted incorrect answers?
When a question makes the HNQ list, upvotes and answers from outsiders flood in.
The score distributions on these questions are highly abnormal. Often, a mediocre answer that misses the actual point ...
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What is our position on answers that consist almost entirely of copied content?
We know that plagiarism is bad, and unacknowledged citations will be dealt with.
However, what about answers that properly acknowledge their sources, but consist of nothing but quotes?
I believe ...
ACuriousMindMod
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20 most viewed questions that need answers
Updated 8 Aug 2022
Here are 20 most viewed questions that need answers. Some of these questions may have answers with negative votes. Only questions with upvotes will be removed from this list. This ...
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When I post a self-answer, is it expected that in the question I should pretend I don't know the answer?
Stack Exchange explicitly encourages writing a self-answer, when appropriate.
Derek Muller posted a video about a wind-powered vehicle that can go downwind faster than that downwind itself.
(The ...
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Should users answer questions that they think should be closed?
From time to time I come across posts that are closed by a user/users who has/have also submitted an answer to the question. I feel like this goes against the goal of closure, which is to prevent ...
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Why is an answer sometimes given in the comments?
After answering this question I noticed this comment that says pretty much the same thing I said. Should I delete my answer because the comment was posted first? Should the commentator have written ...
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Is it OK to copy and paste part of own answer over and over, to answer new questions?
Here I report a subjectively funny case of a person who posts a wall of text over and over, since at least two years, to answer questions. He does modify it in order to adapt it to the asked question, ...
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Age - Score Relation
HT to Danu on this one.
So there was this recent post inquiring about answering 0-answer questions in which a comment read,
It is not evident that votes on answers to old questions are fewer than ...
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Self-promoting your non-standard research through answers?
What is this sites opinion on users answering questions by promoting their own 'non-standard' research? By non-standard, I mean research which makes claims that are generally accepted by the physics ...
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Using Comments as Answers
An answer is placed in the comment box on your question and it would make an answer. As long as you quote it is it OK to use it?
See Comments at this question for example.
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Should we add more answers/comments to the original question of the duplicate?
I personally think that the whole point of creating the duplicates is to encourage users to add new answers/comments to the original question of the duplicate.
But what really seems to happen is that ...
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Questions that look like senseless, but with sensible answers
Here are two questions that do not make sense, while reading them:
At CERN - What do you call the moment (event) particles crash together in the particle accelerator?
Is there a proof of existence ...
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Give an answer or Comment instead?
I've noticed several posts (like this question) lately that are extremely simple questions. In this question, the OP asked for an explanation as well as some examples. At the time of this writing, the ...
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Answering "Homework-Like" Questions With Hints
It occurred to me today that I don't know what a good approach is for providing hints to homework-like questions.
I cannot find any clear policy on how this should work. The example that brought it ...
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What would it look like if rep for questions counted the same/more than answers?
I suppose we can't change the way reputation works on just our site so eventually if this became a serious proposal change it would have to happen on the mother Meta. But before I go and get flamed ...
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Remove the reputation cutoff for the answer ban
There is an automatic answer ban mechanism that stops users from posting many low-quality answers. However, I'm pretty sure users automatically get immunity from the answer ban if their reputation is ...
- 95.5k
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Encouraging users to read the full question
Sometimes on my own questions and other people's questions, I see users posting very useless comments that just show they only read the title of the question, and blazed through the specifics ...
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How to answer when the question is based on a wrong premise?
I ask this wondering about my answer to this recent question, though this applies in a more general setting. The situation is that the question asks about the physical interpretation of the typical ...
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Answering in comments
Due probably to the policy rule "if you downvote, please explain", I find that downvoted or trivial questions in the site are actually answered in the comments to the question!
The problem is the ...
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Confused over site policy regarding similar questions
I asked the question Confusion over QM Free Particle Propagator - Shankar 5.1 last night and it was closed as a duplicate earlier today, because it is similar to the question Free particle ...
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Help reviewing new users' posts [closed]
I just want to bring your attention to the review site where you can see questions/answers posted by new users so we can assist them in getting to know the SE system and maybe improving their posts. (...
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When does it make sense to add an additional answer to a question which has already an accepted answer?
Today I've spotted once again a question, that I thought I could write an answer to, but now it has already an accepted answer (which I quite like and +1ed by the way). So I am again thinking about ...
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Repeating answers in duplicate questions
I recently posted an answer to
(1) Why are magnetic fields only produced by moving charges?
which was marked as a duplicate of
(2) No magnetic field from a static charge - Is there a simple ...
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Should I post a question if I know the answer? Should I answer my own questions?
Recently I had some questions and was going to post them here. While trying to find the best formulation for them I've found the answers.
Posting questions with immediate answers is welcome e.g. on ...
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Is it true that Physics.SE gets bored often?
I have a thought that this question is off-topic. But...
From the day I joined here, I was active (though I had low-quality answers, I was still actively answering) for almost 8 months. Then, I had a ...
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Are link-only answers acceptable?
This (admittedly old) question on meta.SO concerns the handling of answers which contain a link and essentially nothing else. There are some varied opinions on how to handle such answers, ranging from ...
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Why was this beginner's answer deleted ?
An answer by Ubuntu was deleted, wrongly, in my opinion, as not being an answer.
He is offering an alternative answer which can be discussed as to how probable it is for Venus to be captured as is. ...
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Why was this answer deleted as a "complete answer to a homework question"?
I have posted this answer to this question, and it was deleted as a "complete answer".
I don't think can be counted as a complete answer, as I left out all the mathematical details to the OP....
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Why was my answer on decoherence deleted?
My answer to this question was deleted. For anyone who can't see it, the answer was:
I hope somebody will correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the simplest way to phrase the main objection is ...
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Guidelines for answering homework-like questions
I was looking for guidelines, but the best I could find is this. Is there a better statement somewhere?
That was hard enough to find. Perhaps an entry could be put in the help to make it easier to ...
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