Would content curators support/value a feature that prevented new and problem answerers from answering the freshest questions?

Question

As a passionate, daily curator of content in multiple Stack Exchange communities, I've noticed that Stack Overflow (SO) is in dire need of an enhancement to combat the flood of answers on pages that should not be answered.

This problem on SO is pervasive -- it applies to new users with less than 15 rep as well as users with over 1,000,000 rep. They take no pause to consider if the question is clear, complete, unique, and on-topic. The only thought process occurring is: "Can I answer this question?" If the answer is "Yes", then they rush an answer to get those yummy rep points. This lack of consideration creates an unceasing tsunami of daily work for SME curators to downvote, comment, close, and delete unwanted content.

I've proposed a new feature to exclude some users from posting answers on questions posted in the last 4 hours. This feature is completely ignorant of rep points -- it is solely based on the user's historic decisions (or lack thereof) about which questions they feel are worthy of answering versus what curators ultimately decided.

It is a somewhat confronting proposal, but it never prevents anyone from posting an answer on the millions of questions that are on offer. It merely buys the community time to take considered actions. It also naturally grooms contributors to prioritize curation before rep gain -- because only users who habitually post answers on "good questions" will be allowed to answer the freshest questions instantly.

Here is my MSO post: A proposal to put ALL answerers on a path to curating better content

My proposal is predictably gathering downvotes, presumably because it imposes a restriction on users with fewer than 5 total answers. (Mind you, SE already has other safeguards in place to limit actions based on a lack of proven trust.)

My question to this SE-wide community is: Would any other communities value or benefit from this feature being implemented? Is this problem addressed in the proposal unique to SO?

I can say with certainty that the beta community that I moderate (Joomla Stack Exchange) does not suffer from answers on questions that should be closed. Is it consistently true that no other beta communities would have any use for this feature?

• Y.A.: Not a bad idea. I can see it garnering the criticism that it favors people who aren't them and does nothing to solve the perennial fastest gun issue.
• mickmackusa: @ARogueAnt. It absolutely does help to combat FGITW users. If a FGITW user posts too many answers on pages later closed, then they will be limited to non-fresh questions that are presumably vetted by the community. This is definitely one of the major goals of the proposal. People who habitually post on questions that should be closed, will only be able to post on non-fresh answers where earning rep is far, far harder. They can lift the fresh question ban by deleting their answers on closed questions or reopening closed pages or answering more "good" questions.
• mickmackusa: Mods, please edit my earlier comment ^^: able to post on non-fresh answers should be able to post on non-fresh questions (then remove this comment)
• Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog: Related: Is there a system in place to prevent new users asking, answering and accepting answers to each others' off-topic questions?
• mickmackusa: @Sonic, yes, I think my proposal would assist in combatting that problem to some degree as well.
• John Omielan: For anybody interested, the Mathematics site moderators have taken a quite different approach to try to solve a similar problem, as explained in Enforcement of Quality Standards. Even though this started over 3 months, it's still somewhat early to determine how well it's working. Nonetheless, my impression is there's been a somewhat overall net improvement, with fewer poor questions being answered by higher-rep users (note, though, a few have also quit and/or been suspended), but some lower-rep users are now answering more of these questions.
• mickmackusa: @JohnOmielan Wow, looks like Mathematics is taking a stand against this problem. However, they are using strategies that require human-reporting, human-calculation of what defines "a tendency to make low-quality contributions", then a human-mod-decision of what kind of full-blown suspension should be imposed. There will always be people like TobyMac who say that these curation-assisting features limit freedom. You can't please everyone. My concern is that relying on human flagging and mod-suspending is relatively slow and requires much human effort. I prefer automation.
• Journeyman Geek: Well - a counter point would be something like this - where its a subject matter expert with no SE account or experience, and is the only person who can actually answer the question
• mickmackusa: So, the concern is that there is only one person in the world that can answer a given question AND they managed to find that question while it was under 4 hours old AND they decided that they wish to start contributing (or had four or less posted answers)? What do we say when someone wants to post a helpful comment, but they haven't unlocked the privilege yet -- sorry, but you need to farm rep. My proposal doesn't require any rep, just posting history. Otherwise the user has less than 4 hours to craft an excellent, non-rushed answer. I'm willing to bet it will be awesome. @JourneymanGeek
• Journeyman Geek: Fictitious? Other than the 4 hours thing... someone tweeted at him, and that's exactly what John Carmack... did? I'm sure he's quite real
• mickmackusa: Okay, so the real fringe case was that someone posted an answer that could only be answered by a single person. How often does this happen on Stack Exchange? Is that the intended purpose of the SE Q&A's? So I guess, yes, in this very extreme fringe case, John could have spent 4 hours crafting the answer and posted it then (no rush, because nuclear warheads were not deployed in the meantime) or if John never posted an answer prior to that question, then he could have answered 5 other questions to remove the block. I don't really think this fringe case is worth fussing over.
• VLAZ: @mickmackusa "they can expedite the removal of the block by finding 5 other non-fresh questions, answer them, then the block is instantly lifted." I think we both know this is exceptionally unlikely. If I go to a website and I'm asked to do 5 menial but still time consuming tasks only to actually do what I'm there to do, I'll just leave. We do need a solution to FGTW answers but just requiring users to jump through meaningless hoops is not that.
• mickmackusa: @VLAZ it seems that people are choosing to focus on the very small portion of questions that are less than 4 hours old instead of the ENORMOUS collection of questions that are more than 4 hours old. New users don't appreciate the no-commenting rule, but it is in place with the community in mind. This is just more of the same good logic. If the system clearly informs you that you cannot answer fresh questions, then you can simply choose to not look at those questions.
• Braiam: @JourneymanGeek we've had already several examples that can be only authoritatively answered by a single entity, and they usually end in locks since many folks see them as not useful. Heck, I complained about the very feature that makes a particular answer more authoritative than others due being part of a collective. This proposal at least put everyone in the same standing.
• ColleenV: I support gathering data. Imagining what may happen is subject to limitations of our personal experience and the hard-to-account-for inherent belief that "most people" think like we do. I just wondered if you had looked at the effectiveness of something similar or if this was all just theory. My experience on SE is that nothing is as effective in making users "good citizens" as mentoring and behavior modeling by more experienced community members. I mostly hang out on English Language Learners though, which is a much different experience from Stack Overflow.

Answer 1

Would any other communities value or benefit from this feature being implemented? Is this problem addressed in the proposal unique to SO?

Fastest Gun In The West answers aren't a problem that's unique to SO. I've seen my share of them on other sites. I also may have written a few answers myself here to questions that should've been closed, where I couldn't quickly find a suitable duplicate but it later turned out there was one.

Still, I don't think those communities would benefit from your proposal/feature being implemented as-is. There are a few serious downsides to it. One of them is already mentioned in comments: Imposing this limit on users with less than 5 answers could impede those that do offer valuable first contributions. While it may be a good idea to limit people that create a lot of moderation work, the general attitude to moderation on SE is that you first need to prove you create a lot of moderation work before you can be treated as such. What this proposal does is put the frustration of being in a quality ban on individual users that haven't proven to need to be frustrated like that yet.

Another downside: All this 'teaches' new users is that anything should be safe to answer after 4 hours. Which, well... isn't exactly always true. Curators can take a lot longer than 4 hours to make up their minds, the average for SO for this month is 9 hours, see this SEDE query. All the while, new users can't see the number of close votes currently on a question, they can't see vote breakdowns so if there's a +2/-2 vote, they still only see '0'. It really doesn't teach them how to find a suitable question to answer, all it teaches them is 'wait'.

I have a bit of trouble believing this would have any effect on those users with over a million reputation points. If they really gained that much reputation with this exact behavior, that's a problem mainly with the answers getting upvotes, not necessarily with the answers being written. And they can still be the first to answer after 4 hours, as again: not nearly all questions will actually be closed within 4 hours.

While I agree some communities may benefit tremendously from reducing the FGITW answers, just making people wait for an arbitrary amount of time isn't going to solve it: It doesn't teach them to recognize "good" questions, or reminds them to only answer "good" questions. I'd rather focus on educating users before and while they are answering questions instead of having them wait for an arbitrary amount of time, waiting for a teacher to show up, while the teacher is a notorious no-show.

• ColleenV: You may want to explain the meaning of FGITW. My reaction to the proposal is negative, but I wonder if it would make more sense if it was based on whether a question is currently in the process instead of how old it is. However, I still see a lot of problems with preventing people from answering questions. It would have to been done carefully. It would be better to give the user a warning like "Some users have voted to close this question. Are you sure you want to answer it?" (With more detail than that, but you get the idea)
• ColleenV: Well, I believe most problems can be mitigated (if not solved) with education. It won’t work for some people, but that’s nothing new. If everyone responded to being told the right way to use the site, we wouldn’t need question bans.
• mickmackusa: @ColleenV I have said this many times now. My proposal is never "preventing people from answering questions". No users are ever completely silenced. This is far kinder than -- "No, you cannot comment." or "No, you cannot flag." or "No, you cannot ask any more questions." I also support SE doing more to educate users and alerting them when a page has closure flags/votes.
• ColleenV: @mickmackusa Telling someone "come back in 4 hours" is effectively preventing them from answering that question, especially since it’s likely to be closed by the time they get back around to it. Your desired result is that people who don’t care as much as others about whether a question meets quality standard shouldn’t get to write an answer before the question is able to be closed. You want them to not feed the bears. I understand the motivation, I just think it’s a bad solution that will have side-effects you aren’t anticipating.
• mickmackusa: @Tink if someone posts an answer then later ginds a duplicate, then great, close the page and delete your answer (if it's not accepted) -- this means that you are doing your part to help keep the content lean. My proposal does not "impede those that do offer valuable first contributions". If they have valuable insights to offer, there will be YEARS of content by which they can "cut their teeth". If content on the site is still open after 4 hours, there is a fair chance that it will remain open. I predict more closing will occur when people become aware of the importance.
• mickmackusa: @ColleenV I fear I am repeating myself again. If users don't want to see questions that they cannot answer, then offer then a question filter that only shows non-fresh questions. Simple. If a page is closed within that 4 hour window, then great, the proposal worked as designed -- we didn't get an answer posted on a page that should be closed. The page is potentially removed by the Roomba. Humans can put effort elsewhere.
• mickmackusa: So would you both agree with the proposal if the "under 5 answers" rule was removed? I'd like to get a sense for the other half of my proposal.
• Tinkeringbell: @mickmackusa With the average close times from SO that I linked in that SEDE query, I'm just going to believe the data instead of your claim that 4 hours is enough to determine a 'fair chance to stay open'. You're going to end up with a significant amount of answered questions being closed still. And yes, having to wait four hours (or more, or less) before being able to answer is an impediment. Just because they can answer after four hours instead of never being able to doesn't mean it's less of an impediment: It's still a hindrance when trying to do something.
• mickmackusa: I am struggling to comprehend the defensiveness about the freshest questions. What is the average current age of individual Stack Exchange sites? Years. What fraction of a year is four hours. This is nothing.
• Tinkeringbell: Even if it could somehow be calculated on the fly how likely a question is to be closed based on current votes, comments, and time since posting... you've still not taught your user the ability to recognize a good question themselves! All you have taught them is 'our algorithm predicts this question is likely to be closed so you're not allowed to answer it at the moment'. Which will be frustrating and confusing, especially if they see others are able to answer.
• ColleenV: @mickmackusa If you can't understand why allowing anyone to answer any question they have the knowledge and desire to answer is a good thing, or why putting up barriers to new user participation on a site the is completely dependent on volunteer participation and has a steep learning curve could be a bad thing, I don't think we will be able see eye to eye on this. You say My proposal is never "preventing people from answering questions" but you also say that preventing certain people from answering certain questions is your desired result.
• VLAZ: @mickmackusa the biggest problem for me is what Tinkeringbell mentioned but from a slightly different perspective - we need more curation and quality-mindedness. Putting a time out for when users can answer does not achieve that. It does not really alleviate the problem of curation. At best it gives a slight chance that a question will be closed before it's answered. What I would want is users to participate in curation more and in the closure process instead of blindly answering.
• mickmackusa: I disagree @VLAZ part of my 10-point list of benefits on the MSO page specifies that by only allowing these answers on non-fresh questions, they are less likely to unmerited upvotes. This means that curators will have an easier time of influencing, downvoting, and deleting answers that do not benefit the community. Let me say that another way. Often "Upvote Pixies" sprinkle upvotes on answers to fresh questions eventhough these answers 1. should not have been posted 2. might give bad advice 3. might be downright incorrect. Curators have a hard time removing these posts because of the upvotes.
• Tinkeringbell: @mickmackusa Yet, this proposal will probably be just as unlikely to handle those annoying, pesky, high-rep users as the already existing quality bans... If you have enough other contributions, you're not ever likely to hit the criteria for a ban. It will however, affect those people you are trying to teach and that may be open to being taught much more than those high-rep users, and at the same time not teach them how to recognize a bad question that shouldn't be answered. It doesn't only target FGITW users to get rid of those and provide a calmer learning environment for others.
• VLAZ: @mickmackusa "then they will need to start their next session by answering stale questions until the block is lifted" If all you consider is the last X answers, then it's trivial to bypass - post 60% of X answers on new questions, go and answer a decade old question or two which will not be closed. Now now the problem is compounded. Even if people are to go answer stale questions - that doesn't mean their contributions would be good. Decade old questions are already collecting a ton of useless answers. Again: what we need is more people participating in the curation process.