Quite often I see questions asked that have an answer, but are really the wrong question (bear with me here). "How can I add disc brakes to my $200 bike?" The answer is get a new wheelset and fork, and add some tabs to your frame, sure. It can be done, but really it shouldn't be done (in most circumstances). I've seen this with coding/querying questions as well. Should there be some additional modifier for answers that allows an answer to distinctly denote "you can do X this way [modifier section] this is a bad idea for the following reasons". Theoretically up and down voting questions accomplishes some of this, but it isn't as apparent on some of the lower activity questions.
1 Answer
I think the existing mechanisms work pretty well and don't really require any kind of special modifier...
Typically when a question comes in for something that's a bad idea, you'll end up with:
- A highly upvoted comment explaining why it's a bad idea
- A highly upvoted answer that basically says "Ok, look, that's a bad idea and here's why, but if you're going to do it anyways you should [...]"
Either or both of those are a pretty good solution already.
Do you think people are coming to the site, seeing answers about how to do something that's a bad idea, skimming right past the "this is why it's a bad idea" part and only reading the "ok, here's how you do it" part; and that maybe some extra emphasis on the "don't do it!" part would help?
-
That is indeed my concern (unfounded or not). I also worry that some of the people asking the questions aren't prompted enough to take a step back when then ask such a question. Dec 12, 2014 at 19:44
-
1I think the concern is mostly unfounded. Very few times does someone persist on something which is known to be a bad idea.– BatmanDec 14, 2014 at 21:55
-
1Also, who is to decide that it's a bad idea? It shouldn't be one person; it should be a community decision. So we would have a whole new voting mechanism. Let the current system do it's job. If somebody ignores all the down votes, and up voted negative comments, they'll ignore "Bad Idea" tags.– andy256Dec 16, 2014 at 4:52