Everybody understands the answer - but moderators complain - why?

Question

Today I answered this questions:

How to establish boundaries with a roommate without confrontation?

Until now, 9 hours later, 28 people up-voted my answer. This tells me that at least 28 people understand it and like this answer.

But now some users with high reputation tell me in the comments I should improve my answers to follow some rules. Is that really necessary?

Sometimes short answers and direct answers explain all there is to explain. It is really not necessary to add lots of extra information. In this case >25 people understand it but some users pretend they don't understand it or it's not according to some (their?) rules.

I think the idea about this website is to get answers. And answers which people understand. Rules help to explain the idea about this Q and A. I don't think we should spend lots of time to follow certain rules to the letter. It does not make the answers better and it's frustrating to get such requests.

Why should I (we) add more details if "everybody" understands it already?

Edit: I added to my original answer an excellent comment from IMil. I think that's how this community should work. One users writes an answer and another user improves it. Thanks IMil.

Answer 1

First: It´s not Moderators that complain, its other users. I was one of them.

Second: You are reading the polls wrong. Just because you have 25 points does not mean everybody understands it. Could also be 100 up votes and 75 down votes - leaving you with a large part of people that could not make sense of your answer. You can see the actual amount of up/down votes if you click on the number.

Third: Your answer did not stay in the scope defined by the author of the question. As such you should demonstrate especially good reasoning why you think that the author errs at his stated goals. At last you are not the the one who has to live with the outcome.

Remember this site is about answering question on specific interpersonal skills, not about question the authors motives and make choices for them. Also keep in mind that there are very different cultural backgrounds and what is applauded in one part of the world may get you in serious trouble in another!

Answer 2

Ultimately your question boils down to asking "Should I follow the rules?"

Yes you should follow the rules.

Everyone is expected to follow them. A key feature of the rules on this site is that they should be consistently applied. I don't see why because your answer has garnered a few upvotes that it should be treated differently.

Upvotes aren't a good metric for the quality of a post. Most of them come from users who are attracted to this site through the Hot Network Questions feature. These users are new to the site and haven't taken the time to read through meta and learn the rules and conventions of this specific site. They see an interesting question, and upvote the answers that they like.

Answer 3

I was one of the people who voted to remove your answer and noted that in a comment.

I'd suggest that there's a difference between advising on a course of action and providing guidance as a result of the question. Quite frankly, if I were locked out of a space I pay rent for, I'd probably pound on the door until it opened. And I wouldn't be happy about having to do so.

However, the answer provided isn't an answer to the question. I'd submit that the response is the exact thing that the poster wasn't looking for. OP wanted to do this with a minimum of confrontation - pounding on the door at night is, in my opinion, a large confrontation. Feelings will run high on both sides.

I accept that the answer received a lot of upvotes and I congratulate you on that. Obviously that made sense to many people. But, and this is the only reason why I felt the need to make this decision, it didn't guide OP on the course of action they decided to take - be it right or wrong.

Your activity on IPS is appreciated; please don't take what I'm saying as a criticism of you. I needed to really consider what I said and what I say here and look forward to seeing more activity from you in the future.

Answer 4

The trouble is, the "everybody" who saw your answer as the obvious solution did not include the OP. Your profile suggests you are a full-fledged adult who has been out in the world for at least a few years. You've had varied experiences negotiating that world, probably including a few different kinds of living situations. That likely describes most of the SE network's user base. With that kind of context, your answer does, in fact, seem very obvious—almost self-explanatory.

But now, as they say, "explain it to me like I don't know anything." Imagine you're talking to a very young adult (right around eighteen years old). I've never lived anywhere but with my parents, and I've always had my own bedroom. I'm now, for the very first time ever, living with a stranger. What's more, I am terrified of conflict of any sort. In a choice between fight and flight, my first instinct is always flight (and that's usually only after appeasement fails). To ME, "just fight it out" doesn't make sense at all—that's exactly the outcome I want to avoid!

That's essentially the position that the OP was in, with a little creative interpolation. From the question (bolding mine):

• [T]his is my first semester in college where I'm having a roommate

• I was at a loss of what to do in this situation, so I simply left

• So far, I haven’t raised this issue with her, but I am wondering what the best way [is] (without being confrontational).

How are you going to convince such a person that your solution is correct? The OP doesn't know you and doesn't have your life experience, so if you want the OP to see your point of view you need to explain where you're coming from. That's the step your answer omits.

Bottom line: The people who instantly understand your solution don't need your answer because they already know it, and the people who do need your answer won't be convinced without some explanation, so even though your basic premise might be correct you haven't actually helped anyone.

Answer 5

I think the bottom line is that this site seems to have a non-obvious rule/guideline that's presumably known to the moderators and meta community here, but perhaps not known to (or perhaps even not agreed with by) the wider user base - hence the slight difference in opinion.

I'm quoting this version of it from the current top answer to What is the difference between not answering a question and posting a frame challenge?:

Here is what I see necessary for a good frame challenge on IPS:

• A clear explanation of why the author disagrees with the frame of the question.
• A presentation of an alternate frame
• An explanation of how the new frame will solve the OP's problem.

I think that's good advice for writing an answer that has the best chance of being helpful to the OP - and to me it seems that it's not advice your answer followed, at least not before the edit.

However, it isn't going to be obvious to everyone that this is a rule, because not every user of the site will have gone into meta and read it; some who have might not feel that it is yet an agreed-upon rule; and the SE site doesn't really make these kind of meta decisions clear to people who answer questions.

I'm very new to the site so I'll refrain from any opinions on whether this is necessary a big problem, or what the solutions (if any) may be, but I think it is the primary reason for the apparent disparity in reception of your answer between the mods/experienced users and the broader user base.

Answer 6

I've seen fairly often on SE sites that someone will give an answer in which they reject all or part of the premise of the question, and others will then declare that this "doesn't answer the question" and should be deleted or altered so that it accepts the premise.

I'm sorry, but I find this position absurd. Sometimes the only valid answer to a question is to explain why the premise is invalid. Perhaps you've heard the joke, "If Jesus was Jewish, how come he had a Puerto Rican name?" (Which I will proceed to ruin by analyzing it.) If someone asked that as a serious question, surely the only valid response would be to say that Puerto Ricans are borrowing the Jewish name, not the other way around. To insist that any answer must accept the premise of the question and somehow explain how Puerto Ricans came to be living in first century AD Palestine would just be ... wrong.

In any given case, you might, of course disagree with someone who rejects the premise and say that the premise is in fact valid. Most of the time, I think that would best be done by giving a different answer. Comments that say, "I disagree, instead I think the right answer is ..." shouldn't be comments, but alternative answers. I suppose a comment explaining why you think the premise is valid could be appropriate.

On an unrelated issue: Saying answers should be "well sourced" on an Interpersonal Skills site seems to me a very unreasonable demand. Well-sourced how? Is a poster supposed to present a mathematical theorem to prove that his solution is correct? In some cases one might be able to quote a study by social scientists, but, (a) such studies are usually highly debatable, and (b) that kind of evidence only seems to be demanded when the moderators disagree with the answer.