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We have a bunch of good questions with good answers and lots of views, but we keep getting low-quality posts from brand new users on them that end up getting deleted.

For example,

A quick look at the review queue history will show that very few people bother, and I am getting sick of downvoting, flagging and voting to delete posts especially if we could prevent some of them from being posted in the first place.

I think the solution, in this case, is to just protect the questions so that brand new users can't answer them.

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  • I believe that questions automatically get protected when about 3 really bad answers are deleted or down voted. Where good answers have not also been provided.
    – James Jenkins
    Jul 30, 2018 at 15:28
  • @JamesJenkins The UPF one has 5 deleted answers as does the remote one
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Jul 30, 2018 at 15:46
  • Charlie, I agree with you in spirit, but not fully in action. Certain types of questions, which can be lists, opinions, or short answers with a reference or two, encourage new people. The top two of your list are especially prone to that. A very brief analysis shows that on some of these questions, the answers from new users are highly voted, so even if we never see these people again, they've made a good contribution, which is the point of SE.
    – Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL
    Jul 30, 2018 at 20:54
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    @Sue The Europe one should have been a wiki and duplicate answers downvoted, and there are two more answers on the remote one that I would delete as ancedotal but that would take other people downvoting
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Jul 30, 2018 at 20:57
  • We also should take into account the ratio of deleted questions to those we haven't deleted. For instance, the one about where wild camping is allowed has more than 20 open answers. If there are 4 additional ones which have been deleted, I don't think that's a huge problem.
    – Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL
    Jul 30, 2018 at 21:01
  • Charlie, while I respect your right to feel it, I think your idea that very few people bother to vote might not be accurate. For me, there are times when I want to help, but am not sure which way to vote. I research other similar posts and find inconsistencies, which is only human, so previous examples don't always help. I get confused and may not vote as often as I should. Maybe I should do a better job of voting, which I'll try to do. I understand your frustration at taking time for people to vote, but doesn't necessarily mean it should dictate the threshold for protection.
    – Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL
    Jul 30, 2018 at 21:33
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    @JamesJenkins, you're right that a formula causes the community user to protect. See this page on SE:Meta. 3 deleted answers from people with less than 10 rep looks like a criteria, but there are other factors. In our Wild Camping one, 2 were converted to comments, so they might not qualify. The users on 2 others no longer exist, so we don't know how much rep they had. I'm glad you brought this up. I'm going to ask a mod to help us!
    – Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL
    Jul 30, 2018 at 22:17
  • Hi Charlie! I'm confused as to why you just protected Why is boiling water making my steel pot brown?. If it's in the category of your examples, which are mostly list-type, opinion-based and have lots of answers, I'm missing something. It has two good answers and no deleted ones. It's three years old and today was the first new answer, and it's a genuine attempt. I'd really appreciate if you, or someone else involved in this discussion, would help me. Thanks for your time!
    – Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL
    Aug 16, 2018 at 0:05
  • @Sue Because it will have a deleted answer in just a little bit
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Aug 16, 2018 at 0:24
  • Thanks for responding! I thought the point of this post was to protect questions like your examples that already had a number of deleted answers. I didn't think those were good questions anyway and consistently bringing them forward wasn't smart. I might have missed your point, because your comment seems to imply that one deleted answer even on a good question should trigger protection. If I'm wrong, I apologize! If I'm right, I'll just respectfully disagree. Note too that it takes a lot of rep to see deleted answers, so people don't always know what we've done or why. Thanks again!
    – Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL
    Aug 16, 2018 at 3:11

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I don't agree, because every now and then there are great answers by new users. And such questions with high popularity and thus high reach are more likely to attract new users and thus act as an entrance into the TGO community. I believe it is well worth the effort to flag/delete the occasional bad answer, even if I agree there's more bad than good ones.

I don't know why you are so upset over the review process: We are a low volume community. It is just a consequence that review also takes a bit longer. And as far as I see (and vote and flag) the process works. It might help to remember the significance/spirit of "O" in TGO outside of weekends when it comes to presence on SE ;)

EDIT:
I don't mean to say one should never protect it - however I'd only do it for questions that attract frequent bad answers (HQ?).

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  • imsodin, I just noticed that I wrote a bunch of comments to Charlie expressing this same sentiment. I didn't mean to go around your answer. I think this is a balanced viewpoint and totally agree.
    – Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL
    Jul 30, 2018 at 21:36
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    To add, some answers might get outdated and the new answers might end up giving up-to-date information. Protecting would prevent any possible new answers from being added (assuming the authors of the previous answers are no more active and the existing users anyway don't go and check old questions).
    – Ricketyship
    Aug 2, 2018 at 8:51
  • The frustration comes from the large share of this that seems to come my way because others aren't very active, I have helped delete more posts than I have written answers, and 11% of all the downvotes on the site have been done by me.
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Aug 2, 2018 at 14:45
  • @Ricketyship, that's an excellent point! For whatever reason, new people come across an interesting answer, even years later, and offer something new. Those answers go into a review queue anyway, so people who've been around a while get a chance to help them. We can teach them how to improve their question, or edit it, or something, instead of blocking their ability to participate.
    – Sue Saddest Farewell TGO GL
    Aug 3, 2018 at 3:31
  • @Sue All they need is one upvote on an answer, or two on a question and then they can answer the protected questions. On the other hand, I helped to delete 6 posts since I posted this meta question. And questions are not eligible for protection until we have deleted at least one answer.
    – Charlie Brumbaugh
    Aug 3, 2018 at 4:05

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