People denying the situation in the questions instead of answering

Question

I have recently noticed a trend in the answers on academia.se to question the situation about which OP is asking because not every single detail is provided, instead of answering what is being asked.

Most recent examples from a few days ago include:

Should professors intervene if a student is wearing offensive clothing in their classroom?

• The question asks what to do about clearly offensive clothing worn to class as a TA or other person of authority
• Some answers, instead of answering, argue that the OP is easily offended, or that what was offending to her is not offending in general

Is it ethical to apply different criteria for graduate admissions based on country of undergraduate study?

• The question is asking if it is ethical to design admission criteria according to a certain statistics their research revealed (it is a bit of a controversial admission criteria). (example)
• Instead of answering, some answers were suggesting that the statistics and the research they did must have been wrong and the results are not valid. (example)

These are just two more recent examples. I know when I was asking a question lately, I was sure to cover all my bases (e.g. explicating that everything was done ethically and in good will) to avoid answers questioning my motives and methods, since I saw this kind of non-answers prevail and even be the most-upvoted answers often.

I understand that questions asking clearly unethical things, such as How do I best cheat on the admission process, or something similar, should not be answered, but this is not the case I am talking about.

One other thing is that people say "if you do not want to disclose the details, there is something wrong or unethical in your methodology, because you don't want to disclose the details." I understand the need for anonymity, or the wish to generalize, so I don't think this is a good trend

While some of the opinions might be valid in case the OP really made a mistake, those kind of answers still do not answer the question actually asked, and it is not our place to question the facts presented.

Yet, the community seems not to be condemning those kind of answers very strong: neither of the examples I linked to has negative score (one has a positive one!), even thou, (and, please, correct me if I'm wrong), they do not actually answer the question.

Do we really want to collect such answers?

And, as a secondary questions, what do we want to do with such answers that already exist? Should we flag-delete them? We could wait for the down-votes to push them sufficiently down, but especially on a bit controversial questions, those answers seem to get support from part of the community because of their attitude towards the controversial issue in question, and not because they actually offer an answer.

Answer 1

A fundamental rule of flags is: flags are NOT to be used to delete incorrect or bad answers.

That is, if there is an actual attempt to engage the question, you cannot ask the mods to delete the question just because you think it is inaccurate, gives bad advice, or challenges the assumptions in the question instead of accepting them as fact.

The correct way to express your displeasure with such a question is to downvote it.

Answer 2

As one of my answers was pulled out as an example, I think I should chime in here. Let me start by saying I think this is an important question and needs to be discussed. Further, to be clear, I do not feel attacked, singled out, or defensive. I think that the highlighted answer is a good example of the issue.

The issues with these types of answers is that the person writing the answer may be convinced that they are not denying the situation and think they are providing a helpful answer. The votes on answers like these are not particularly meaningful. As you say,

those answers seem to get support from part of the community because of their attitude towards the controversial issue in question

but I would also claim they get down votes because of the controversial issue in the question. Flagging the question doesn't generally work since most answerers will not see the flag. It also doesn't provide a place for discussion and puts mods/high rep users in a difficult situation. It seems to me that the comments to the answer and/or chat (and possibly meta) is the place to discuss and figure out what is going on. It might be informative to go back to my answer to see how I thought about it.

The title of the question is:

Is it ethical to apply different criteria for graduate admissions based on country of undergraduate study?

The only statement within the body of the original question (and current version) with a question mark is

Is it fair to apply different criteria to students from different countries in admissions decisions?

I think that the number of up votes on the question suggest it is an important question for our site. Despite my up vote for the question, I don't think the question is a particularly good fit for the SE format since the question "is X ethical/fair" is essentially a yes/no question and providing an evidence based answer is difficult. I think this is confirmed by the number and variety of answers as well as the up votes and down votes of the answers.

Moving on to my answer and the "charge" levied against it:

Instead of answering, some answers were suggesting that the statistics and the research they did must have been wrong and the results are not valid.

We need to first decide if I answered the question. My first sentence could (and probably should) be reworded to be

I would argue that you are using the results in an unethical and discriminatory way because you are interpreting your data incorrectly

That seems to me to be a pretty clear answering of the question. I answered "No, it is not ethical". I then tried to provide reasoning for why I answered the way I did. My answer is not particularly great in that there is little evidence to support my claim. I don't want to clarify/defend my answer here as it is too far removed from the answer itself, but I am happy to continue to clarify/defend my answer in either the comments to the answer or in chat. At the heart of my reasoning is that based on the original question, the edits to the question, the comments, and my chat discussion with the OP suggests that the classic mistake of interpreting correlation as causation is being made. I tried very hard in my answer to not claim that the statistics were wrong, but purely focused on the interpretation. In summary, I disagree with both claims about my answer (not answering the question and denying the situation).

Currently the answer has 3 down votes and three people made "negative" comments prior to the last down vote being cast. From the negative comments it is clear that my answer is confusing to people and could use an edit. The up votes (and one positive comment) suggest to me that some people see the value in my answer. Based on the mixed feedback, I would normally edit my answer to try and improve it. In this case, I feel it is better to leave it be at least for a while so that this discussion about the issue of answers that miss/deny the point can be addressed.

Answer 3

I think commenting and downvoting are probably the best options here. I suspect flags will be ignored for the reasons @aeismail mentions. The problem is that the "community" (defined as readers who vote) appear to have conflicting views on the matter, and what you're asking about is a form of minority protection that SE doesn't really have a mechanism for.

But I know that I read comments very carefully, and that I'd be influenced by comments pointing out that the answer is not answering the question as stated. I tend to be less likely to downvote (and I'm not sure why), and maybe that's part of the problem.

Answer 4

The behaviours you are seeing of questioning the question is due to the enormous prevalence of X-Y questions in the original StackOverflow and other STEM StackExchange sites. Questions where the thread is "how do I do X", but experienced users see that the OP has a more fundamental misunderstanding, and should really be doing Y. The SO model is so popular because follow-up comments let us determine the true nature of the OPs intent, get to the bottom of the question, and answers can either target the question-as-asked, or the OPs fundamental issue if it deviates. This is a good thing. Answering all questions at face-value is not helpful -- otherwise why was the OJ Simpson thread closed?

Answer 5

Answers questioning the question are ultimately non-constructive.

Such things should be dealt with on of the following, instead of posting answer:

• comments under question if someone asks for more details,
• down votes,
• close votes.

One of powers of StackExchange is that is is not a forum.

However, I remember some questions when the correct answer was that someone is interpreting situation incorrectly. (But it is rather an exception than rule.)

And what we should do with such answers?

• If it is "not even an answer" then should comment suggesting posting it as a comment to question (and delete the answer).
• If it has parts of an answer (just plays down the importance of issue, or anything) - do as with any other answer we think that adds negative net value: downvote (it's better to stay democratic here).

(A separate issue, perhaps worth a different question on meta, is whenever to provide direct examples. In some cases, for example the "clearly offensive clothing" it might cut some idle discussion (though, I would advice to use different example of a similar calibre, for the sake of anonymousness). For example in question What to do if assignment is against student's religion? an example helps in avoiding "guessing game".)

Answer 6

I think you have to be careful to not eliminate the best possible response to some questions. Many times the best response to a question is simply not an answer (or JUST an answer). For example, if someone asks for the best way for a high school freshman to break into math research, the best response must at least include some sort of serious challenge to the OP (whether or not it gives the most plausible way for the freshman to break into research). This is an extreme example, but in general many responses should challenge the assumptions of the OP, while also giving an answer. Because these are often human matters that are extremely emotionally charged, it is important to challenge the OP if they are in false dichotomous thinking, for example. But in almost every case I think this should be accompanied by an ANSWER, GIVEN THE ASSUMPTIONS OF THE OP.

Answer 7

IMO, this is a species of a more general problem on discussion forums. Members too often want to contribute when they don't have anything to contribute. Those members often write posts that either,

• tell the OP that they should not give too much thought to their concern,
• tell the OP that they should go about things an entirely different way that happens to render the question moot,
• tell the OP that they're wrong about a subjective matter, or
• question the OP's reasons for wanting to do what they want to do.

In any case, these replies suck. We should ban them.