Timeline for Should comments be used for providing "helpful hints"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 29, 2020 at 2:44 | comment | added | Jeffrey Phillips Freeman | @BioPhysicist yea i understand that. I'm just saying if someone isnt going to post a helpful or implortant one-line comment that helps the user arrive at an answer in an answer, I'd personally rather see it in a comment than not to have it recorded at all. At the very least this means if/when someone does write an answer they might use the "hint" in the comment to help them as a kicking off point. Hell if the hint is enough it would be acceptable as an answer as is, they could even copy paste it, easy karma harvesting :) | |
| Sep 29, 2020 at 2:30 | comment | added | BioPhysicist | The reason to discourage would be because we want content that is actually helpful and important to be found in answers, and because we don't want questions / answers to be cluttered with comments. | |
| Sep 29, 2020 at 1:16 | comment | added | Jeffrey Phillips Freeman | @BioPhysicist Not all the time, I agree. That depends on the OP if they have the good sense and desire to contribute to the community after they have their answer, or if they even bother to do the research at all. But I'd argue even in the case where the question is neither edited nor the post improved it still did more good (potentially helped the user) than to have said nothing at all. So I see no reason to discourage it. | |
| Sep 28, 2020 at 18:06 | comment | added | BioPhysicist | @JeffreyPhillipsFreeman I agree with the goal, but I think the divergence occurs in whether or not hint comments do this. I don't think they often do encourage question edits or post improvements. | |
| Sep 28, 2020 at 18:02 | comment | added | David Z | Sure, I agree with that. | |
| Sep 28, 2020 at 12:51 | comment | added | Jeffrey Phillips Freeman | @DavidZ I think a bit part of the reason for that is the nature of SE. There is pressure to give high quality, detailed, well cited answers or else get down voted. While this in and of itself isnt a bad thing, it drives quality, I dont think the problem lies in the rules so much as the community. I find answers get downvoted without anyone helping to improve them, sometimes they even make it personal and follow someone around and give them a hard time. The solution is to encourage people to offer comments or edits to questions to help improve them, constructively, rather than jump to downvote/ | |
| Sep 28, 2020 at 5:57 | comment | added | David Z | For what it's worth, I saw a lot of cases where people thought they would have to put in more effort to make a proper answer, when in fact they could have just copied and pasted the content of their comment into the answer box and it would be a legitimate answer. | |
| Sep 28, 2020 at 2:13 | history | edited | Peter Mortensen | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Copy edited (e.g. ref. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/supposed#Adjective> and <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/doesnt#Verb>). [(its = possessive, it's = "it is" or "it has". See for example <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc&t=1m20s> and <https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Its-and-It%27s>.)] |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 15:21 | comment | added | Jeffrey Phillips Freeman | @BioPhysicist While Ideally I'd love to see someone put in more effort and make a proper answer, if they are uninterested in doing so for whatever reason, but might offer a hint that is helpful, I'd like to see it allowed simply because, well its helpful, I see no reason not to allow things that help. Afterall by virtue of the fact that it is helpful it may lead the user or others to an answer and ultimately allow the question to be answered. I understand you cant downvote comments but that just means comments are at-your-own-risk to follow them. | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 14:58 | comment | added | BioPhysicist | Right, I guess that's where I'm at too, although I'm probably on the other side thinking it shouldn't be allowed; just put in more effort and make an answer. | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 14:42 | comment | added | Jeffrey Phillips Freeman | Regardless if the rules explicitly allow it, and I certainly have no objection to adding more verbage to the rules to make it more explicit. I would say if a hint is helpful, it should be allowed, particularly if it isnt sufficient to be considered an answer. If that isnt made clear by the current wording of the rules I'd encourage whoever has the power to update the rules to make that explicit. | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 14:21 | comment | added | BioPhysicist | Don't get too caught up in the example. There certainly are cases where the hints are actually more helpful. I'm just trying to give a general idea | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 14:16 | comment | added | Jeffrey Phillips Freeman | @BioPhysicist So really sounds like you mean unhelpful hints :) in which case I'd agree that really isnt all that useful if you cant even give enough information to help the person take the next steps and are stating something they probably already know. | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 13:01 | comment | added | BioPhysicist | I should have been more clear about what I mean by hints. For example, if the question was "Why do two objects in a vacuum in a uniform gravitational field experience the same acceleration even if they have different masses", and someone commented "set up Newton's second law with the appropriate forces", that is a hint comment. It doesn't answer the question, nor does it seem to be an appropriate comment. I wasn't really talking about posting references and further reading in the comments. I'll update my question though. | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 12:52 | comment | added | Jeffrey Phillips Freeman | @BioPhysicist "A hint isn't telling the user anything to do to improve the post. " While I do agree that "Hey you should do some research by looking up XXX and then update your question to show your research if it still doesnt answer your question"... would be a more helpful form of a hint than just "Have you looked at XXXX". So while I agree it may not be the best approach, or at least not the most explicit one, to helping the user improve their question, I do think it still falls under the category. I see it as the right reason for a comment, but poor execution. | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 12:40 | comment | added | BioPhysicist | I do agree hints are not full answers, but that's not a good argument as for why they should be posted as comments. Not answer$\neq$ comment. Why not just put in a little more effort and make an answer? | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 12:39 | comment | added | BioPhysicist | A hint isn't telling the user anything to do to improve the post. The transient category appears to be more for "meta" information as seen in the examples of "a link to a related question, or an alert to the author that the question has been updated". I don't think hints fall into either of these categories. | |
| Sep 26, 2020 at 12:41 | history | answered | Jeffrey Phillips Freeman | CC BY-SA 4.0 |