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Timeline for Fastest Gun in the West Problem

Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0

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Mar 30, 2018 at 11:24 comment added Pollyanna @jww “Not an answer” is pretty well defined on the sites and there’s a flag for it. If, in your estimation, an answer post isn’t an answer then you should flag it as such.
Mar 30, 2018 at 9:33 comment added user173448 Maybe I am missing the point, but the {quick|dirty|partial|incomplete} answer sounds more like a Comment rather than an Answer. It probably has no business being posted as an answer.
May 10, 2017 at 4:55 comment added Ben "Quick and dirty answers" often serve the needs of the asker all the more specifically because they're quick, definitely we don't want to discourage them. But more complete answers often do better for the "long term information store" purpose of stack exchange, because later viewers rarely have exactly the same problem as the original asker. A more rounded answer is more likely to help people with related-but-not-identical problems.
Mar 14, 2017 at 17:41 comment added Douglas Daseeco In general, for me, about 100 out of every 1,000 words in SE content is immediately usable, another 100 is at least helpful, and the other 800 is either flat out wrong or misleading. This is true whether there are 5 answers with 200 words or 50 answers with 20 words. The issue this question raises is not related to the size of the answer directly. Brevity is an artifact of the fact that quick-draw answer authors have a statistical advantage in the gaining of reputation points. It's a splendid analogy. What people are requesting is more law and therefore order, just as townspeople once did.
Feb 17, 2016 at 18:10 comment added Luo Jiong Hui There are 2 issues here, rewarding someone who answered the question and sorting the answers so reviewers find better answers on top. Reputation is for rewarding. We can give people reputation for their fast contribution, but we cannot reward people by sorting their answers to top. Based on this idea, fastest guns already got their reputation by answering the question, why would we still give them the sort privilege? This is just not fair for reviewers to find better answers. Sorting should be "Votes over per time average" or "Votes over per 100 reviews" based.
Aug 27, 2014 at 18:43 comment added crush The idea here is that reputation is awarded to the poster who actually earned it since that is the incentive for participating in the first place. It is discouraging to be the first to offer a legitimate answer, only to see your reputation gains to another user who plagiarized, or answered long after you. Yes, I will acknowledge that some users answer questions without the sole intent to acquire reputation. I would wager that is not the norm.
Aug 27, 2014 at 18:37 comment added crush Part of the problem here is that the placeholder answers appear within the grace period as the "first legitimate answer". The logical reasoning of the questioner would dictate that given two roughly similar answers, the first one posted should be accepted. However, often times, the first one posted wasn't the first to actually answer, and either edited later or even plagiarized another answer. There's nothing wrong with quick & dirty answers - if they actually answer the question.
Aug 5, 2014 at 6:56 comment added Robert I would even say a good answer posted after 4 minutes is worth more than a placeholder posted after 3 minutes (which got edited to a mediocre answer after 11 minutes and accepted as the fastest after 15 minutes.)
Jul 31, 2014 at 22:11 comment added Martin Capodici @Tom - but a brilliant answer released at 11am is worth more than a bad answer at 10:45am.
Dec 26, 2013 at 16:48 history edited aaazalea CC BY-SA 3.0
highlighted "further"
Sep 11, 2013 at 18:12 history edited user102937 CC BY-SA 3.0
added 4 characters in body
Sep 10, 2013 at 17:07 comment added Tom Au George Patton said (in the military) that a pretty good plan executed today was worth more than a brilliant plan executed next week
Apr 7, 2013 at 12:32 history edited user152859 CC BY-SA 3.0
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Apr 7, 2013 at 12:30 history edited Lesmana CC BY-SA 3.0
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Dec 30, 2011 at 15:37 history made wiki Post Made Community Wiki by Pollyanna
S May 18, 2011 at 5:19 history suggested SamB CC BY-SA 3.0
answers only have one question (so far ;-)
May 18, 2011 at 5:12 review Suggested edits
S May 18, 2011 at 5:19
Feb 11, 2011 at 18:29 comment added Petrus Theron Even though I encourage quick and dirty answers, better (and later) answers should triumph over quick and dirty ones...in the long run. But "in the long run" is not good enough for right now. The underlying problem is that questions with one up-voted post are considered "answered". Early upvoted posts build momentum by being shown first and allot the question as "answered", discouraging delayed higher-quality posts which would provide better information to all future viewers, but which can never build the same momentum as the first quick and dirty answer.
Oct 1, 2010 at 13:54 comment added Andrew Grimm @Pollyanna: Do you mean "There are generally few answers per question", rather than vice versa?
Sep 15, 2010 at 3:13 comment added Jim L A quick, but relatively complete answer: ok. A quick "this question has been answered" gamer is not ok (so either I keep typing and ignore it, or kill yet more time waiting to load the other questions to see if any are ok). I can all but name names of people who habitually answer with < 10 words on certain tags then come back and add enough to actually get an answer. At what point is enough rep enough rep?
Mar 15, 2010 at 21:16 comment added allyourcode re Pollyanna's second point: I do not doubt that people look at all answers to old questions occasionally, and upvote the better ones, but I think that's rare. One of the points that I'm trying to make is that there's alot of room for improvement when the desired outcome is requires a whole series of rare occurrences.
Mar 15, 2010 at 21:11 comment added allyourcode It's not necessarily about "length". No one is suggesting that word or char count be used as the sort criterion. As for "this is sufficient, therefore it should win", you're assuming that every answer that reaches some threshold of completeness is just as good. I completely disagree.
Mar 8, 2010 at 15:09 comment added Pollyanna @allyourcode - further, my own experience shows that longer posts which come later still receive significant upvotes over time. Otherwise the necromancer badge would never be awarded. People still vote on posts I made 2 years ago. Your assumption that people don't go back and upvote posts, even shown way down on the page, is flat out wrong. But don't take my word for it - examine the data dump and draw your own conclusions.
Mar 8, 2010 at 15:02 comment added Pollyanna @allyourcode - but if the quick and dirty answer is right and sufficient to resolve the issue, then who is to say that the longer, more ponderous message is righter or sufficienter than the quick and dirty answer? Why do people hold so tightly to the idea that a longer, perhaps even more complete answer, is better than the shorter answer which also resolves the problem, and has come earlier to boot? Keep in mind that we're not talking about wrong answers. Both are right.
Mar 8, 2010 at 2:21 comment added allyourcode In that case, the quick and dirty answers that start at the top tend stay there, and the carefully thought-out ones tend to stay near the bottom. You can't dismiss this by saying "when that happens, it means the quick and dirty answers are deserve to be on top". The problem is that quick and dirty answers benefit from a positive feedback loop: the higher an answer is in the list, the more likely someone is to view and upvote it. Long and thorough answers, on the other hand, have to fight an uphill battle in order to gain attention, a prerequisite for upvotes.
Mar 8, 2010 at 2:12 comment added allyourcode I disagree. As to your key point, I don't think people who come much later read through all the answers and upvote the good ones. A more likely scenario is that they go through the first couple of answers, because in the mind of that person, the first couple of answers probably a) are the best b) contain 80% of the information one would get by reading all of the answers, which might take considerable time. That person is not likely to review all the answers, even if the first couple do not contain all the details he cares about. Would you start from the middle or end of the list of answers??
Aug 25, 2009 at 23:00 history edited GEOCHET CC BY-SA 2.5
deleted 7 characters in body
Jul 26, 2009 at 13:52 history migrated from stackoverflow.com (revisions)
Jan 28, 2009 at 17:19 comment added Pollyanna The bounty system is working very well to give the detailed long answers a chance for great rep increases...
Sep 20, 2008 at 4:54 comment added Ryan Well to combat this and other problems with too many users hitting threads, it could always be set up with invisible 'mirrors', but that would mean that not every person would be able to see every question, but it would have to stay consistent so people would always be in the same realm together.
Sep 20, 2008 at 2:07 comment added Sparr Taking your stance as valid, I think there is still an issue whereby most question-posters will not come back a day+ later to upvote/select the best answer. If there was some [more obvious / greater] incentive to do that then I could agree with you more completely.
Sep 11, 2008 at 20:13 comment added Pollyanna tonylo, the main problem being discussed here is that there's a lot of initial activity on a question, most of which makes spending time on a great answer less advantageous. So the issue is really only with questions that will stay on the front page and deciding whether to make a great post or not.
Sep 11, 2008 at 17:49 comment added tonylo I disagree too. Even in beta there are enough new questions that old answered questions get rotated off the front page. Most of your argument assumes that the person who asked the question performed due diligence to maintain that question. I don't think that happens as much as it should do.
Sep 11, 2008 at 13:43 history answered Pollyanna CC BY-SA 2.5
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