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I suppose the answer to my question has to be "all of them" since we are a Stack Exchange site.. but I'm still going to ask..

I suspect that not all of the metrics are intuitive. For example, if the "perfect" answer to a question already exists, should people be posting an "almost-perfect" answer simply to boost our answer ratio?

I guess my concern is that how we're assessed doesn't necessarily line up with how we ought to behave. Are there easy things we should be doing which would make the site "healthier?"

Also, I have no sense right now of how healthy is Blender.SE right, from the perspective of the people who decide whether we graduate from Beta, or get shut down. Is there somewhere we can look to get that information?

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  • $\begingroup$ Also, the answer ratio is not very good, mainly because some questions are virtually unanswerable. $\endgroup$ – someonewithpc Apr 27 '15 at 16:04
  • $\begingroup$ It makes me wonder if we should be tossing up answers, even if they can only 1/2 hit the question, for the sake of Stack Exchange's quality metrics. $\endgroup$ – ajwood Apr 27 '15 at 18:43
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I don't know if this is an answer or a continuation of your question..

if the "perfect" answer to a question already exists, should people be posting an "almost-perfect" answer simply to boost our answer ratio?

Not if quality is of prime importance. If the question is well defined then the answer is often self-evident, and may comprise of 1 most applicable solution or several alternatives. When the alternatives are short and trivial, people tend to cluster them in their main answer. If there are other less trivial solutions that are equally valid, can we police one person into not giving all solutions in one answer - probably not.

Looking at the unanswered questions, many of them have answers in the comments and that increases the probability that they'll not take the extra step and give a proper up-votable Answer. Why? I don't know..

The comments are meant to extract information in a vague situation, not give a prelude to the answer or suffice as answer. A solution is to avoid comment-answers entirely and maybe even penalize them (but the idea of policing that seems a bit un-natural).

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  • $\begingroup$ I do mostly answer in comments but I do follow with a full answer I just try to make sure that I'm really solving the problem , the comment answer will give the asker the idea to solve his problem ( if he is experienced enough ) it also gives me some time to write a good answer that could be useful for others as well $\endgroup$ – Chebhou Apr 28 '15 at 15:20
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    $\begingroup$ in the exchange of information I think comment-answers are OK, it just doesn't help the stats. We almost have 10k questions and that's the kind of datapool that starts to give insight statistically. $\endgroup$ – zeffii Apr 28 '15 at 17:09
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    $\begingroup$ @Chebhou I have done some reading allover SE about answering in the comments. It is not the best way to go about answering a question. It is highly discouraged, and further more there is nothing stopping anybody from posting your "answer" as an actual answer. $\endgroup$ – David Apr 28 '15 at 21:26
  • $\begingroup$ @David Exactly, that has happened to me before $\endgroup$ – VRM May 2 '15 at 11:13

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