Questions tagged [answers]
Questions about answers: how to answer, whether specific answers are appropriate, and so forth.
94 questions
6 votes
1 answer
47 views
Not seeing names of authors on answers?
As of this morning (10AM PST Oct 14th 2025), I can not see the names of authors of answers on CrossValidated (It worked yesterday). Is it just on my end? Is it a system bug? Otherwise, what changed ...
- 13k
9 votes
3 answers
165 views
How to vote on partial answers?
At times I see that someone will provide an answer that, while not directly addressing all of the points in a question, will nonetheless give a good insight on something that is either partially ...
- 21.5k
9 votes
1 answer
176 views
Distribution of question and answer votes on CV
My question is simple theoretically, but probably not so simple practically... Is there a way to check the distribution of question votes vs answer votes on CV? My assumption is that people are more ...
- 21.5k
4 votes
3 answers
221 views
When should an answer be given as opposed to just giving a hint
It's my impression that on this site (and https://math.stackexchange.com/) that many times questions aren't answered but just hints in the comments are given. (This is different on https://...
- 5,550
-8 votes
3 answers
303 views
Answering a question other than the one that is asked
There are a few topics on this site (unbalanced data, up-weighting, accuracy, F1 score, precision/recall etc) that whenever a user asks a question regarding one of these methods/metrics, a few high ...
- 1,638
15 votes
3 answers
284 views
What are some "best practices" for editing to improve a post?
We already have another excellent question on CV.SE setting out editing dos and don'ts, but that mostly focuses on the limitations that apply to editing other people's posts, rather than the substance ...
- 142k
14 votes
2 answers
244 views
What to do when an answer is wrong, but a comment box is too small?
Sometimes a user offers an Answer which can be proven false, but the proof doesn't fit in the comment box. Is there a best practice for pointing this out? (I'm explicitly not asking about differences ...
SycoraxMod
- 95.8k
3 votes
0 answers
82 views
what is an answer versus a comment to a self-study question
We don't just post answers to self-study questions where we give the proof of whatever the OP is asking. I think this is a good policy. However, that seems to mean that any post in response to a self-...
- 72.9k
8 votes
2 answers
97 views
A mod removed my answer (referencing the answer from comments) to my question saying it doesn't answer it
I have a question about my Cross Validated post: Statistics: what kind of test to use to test this hypothesis? A member commented on my question in detail, and that comment did answer my question. I ...
- 121
21 votes
2 answers
312 views
If someone answered my question outside CV, can I post the answer myself and accept?
I asked a question on CV and linked it to an author of a paper. They are not on CV, but gave me an answer. Is it OK to post it as an answer, as long as I say who it is from and that it isn't my own ...
- 11.7k
12 votes
1 answer
172 views
How to answer questions about backpropagating specific architectures or functions?
There are quite a few questions asking how to run backpropagation when dealing with skip connections, residual networks, "mixed" RNN-CNNs, attention mechanisms, etc. I suspect the reason for the ...
- 26.8k
11 votes
3 answers
271 views
If OP asks for a software referral, and a referral *doesn't* exist, may we answer with the code they asked for?
If an OP asks for a R library recommendation (policy under debate in another meta thread, I realize), and no acceptable recommendation exists, what is the policy regarding writing and posting code ...
- 2,252
12 votes
1 answer
245 views
Do we have an authoritative answer on why validation accuracy can oscillate or even increase, when validation loss keeps increasing?
I know that accuracy is an improper scoring rule, thus it shouldn't be used to choose among classifiers. In particular, it should not be used to choose the best hyperparameters for a NN. However, ...
- 18.6k
11 votes
2 answers
331 views
Mentioning commercial/freemium product that I developed in my answers
I am an expert on the topic and answered a set of questions. I am wondering if it is OK to mention the solver that I develop given that it is commercial but has freemium plans. All my answers are ...
- 164
22 votes
5 answers
753 views
Is a quick-and-dirty answer better than no answer?
I find that many questions go unanswered for lack of a great answer. That applies to both CV and here on CV meta. Whether this is due to brain drain, or a flood new users, or perfectionism, is hard to ...
- 13k