We get a lot of answers here... should we implement some system changes that will encourage users to review existing answers before adding their own?

Question

Recently it came to my attention that there are per-site configuration settings that allow us to create some extremely minor barriers to answering questions when more than n answers already exist. This is currently implemented on the site but the threshold for tripping it is set at 30 answers.

The difference is that, instead of an answer field, there's a button that reads "Answer this question" which, when clicked, creates a popup with the following text:

This question has more than {x} answers already.

Did you read through all the existing answers first to make sure your answer will be contributing something new?

Also, please note that you can click the edit link on any of these answers to improve them.

This doesn't prevent answers, per se, but it does ask users to be cognizant of the existing answers before posting their own.

Should we request this limit to be lowered, and to what?

As a note, questions are automatically flagged by the system when a question receives ten answers within seven days. We largely ignore these flags because there's not much for us to do about them, considering the vast quantity of answers we get here. I'm also interested in changing this auto flag, which is apparently also configurable. This doesn't affect the users as the only people who see it are mods but we need to request it on meta to have it changed.

I think that, since the system sees fit to flag at 10 answers, we might consider something lower than that for the "answer this question" button - perhaps something around seven.

Answer 1

1. Raise the autoflag threshold to 15.

We have issues on Worldbuilding with questions that get lots of answers. The HNQ effect means that many get 10 or more, and our record is at least 30 or 40, I think. However, we (the Worldbuilding mods) did there what we (the IPS mods) do here, and let the answer autoflags sit for a while. So we got the threshold raised, to 15 answers, and we've been extremely happy. We might as well raise the threshold to 15 answers for IPS, because otherwise, we just accumulate a bunch of flags that we won't touch for a couple days. And that's a bit annoying.

Plus, the IPS question rates is low enough that, with the help of community flaggers, we can catch low-quality answers decently quickly. So not getting notified when there are 10 answers to a question within a short period of time (which may include one or two that may require deletion) isn't a huge problem for us.

2. Lower the popup threshold to 7-10.

I don't have a great idea of when, on average, questions start to get duplicate answers. Is it 5 (probably not)? 15 (maybe)? 20 (definitely)? I'd feel good about something in the range of 7-10, according to my gut. As I said before, we've got a good flagging/commenting community, and they can be our first line of defense against these posts (sure, getting them after they're posted, but still). That's in part why I'm not necessarily going along with 7; I think we can afford to go a bit higher. But certainly not more than 10.