Could Socratic come up with a way for answers that are repeats to be deleted?
There's currently a way to mark a duplicate question so that it can be reviewed. I believe the questions are merged if there are multiple good answers and I'm guess the question is deleted if it's a complete duplicate with no answer.
I think we should have the option to mark answers as duplicates. There are some cases where a person only adds a sentence or two that's a new thought, but then there are also plenty of instances where absolutely nothing new is added to the answer. It's exactly the same as an answer above or below, or it's the same information but less of it. If we could mark these answers as duplicates, and then they could be reviewed, I think it would make the site look a bit cleaner. Just my two cents!
There's currently a way to mark a duplicate question so that it can be reviewed. I believe the questions are merged if there are multiple good answers and I'm guess the question is deleted if it's a complete duplicate with no answer.
I think we should have the option to mark answers as duplicates. There are some cases where a person only adds a sentence or two that's a new thought, but then there are also plenty of instances where absolutely nothing new is added to the answer. It's exactly the same as an answer above or below, or it's the same information but less of it. If we could mark these answers as duplicates, and then they could be reviewed, I think it would make the site look a bit cleaner. Just my two cents!
1 Answer
Ok, let me see if I understand what you're saying.
You want to know if we could come up with a way to remove duplicate answers, in addition to what we have now, which is merging duplicate questions, right?
Well, we have a way of doing that. The five Heroes + Becca (or I should say Becca + the five Heroes :P) have the ability to remove answers, which we mainly use for maintenance and "housekeeping" purposes.
So, if you happen to spot such an answer, you can do one of two things
- try to edit one of them so that it doesn't look so much the the other(s)
- give one of us a shout and we'll come check out the answer, and possibly remove it if the situation calls for it
Theoretically, you would have a third option, which would be to flag of the two answers for "More explanation" and wait for someone to come in and add something to it.
Practically, that doesn't do much. Not many people actually bother to add more explanation to an answer.
This is why I think marking an answer as duplicate, for example, will not have a significant impact. Of course, some will be updated, but some will not, which is what we're already seeing with the current flagging system.
Bottom line, we can remove duplicate answers, so if you spot such an answer, give one of us an @mention :)
