Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/87294/

I guess I don't know why SNB needed to contribute to this answer? Was Zed's not enough? Or why did he need to repeat a small portion of what she said?

A lot of his answers recently have caused me to say okaaaaaaaaay dude, whatever you want.

My guess in this case is that he wrote his answer first and Zed added hers later.

That's fair, but it seemed like such an incomplete answer. "Yeah, I talked to a guy, and I'm not sure that it's accurate, but here you go, this is all the effort you get" on something that was apparently incredibly easy to answer via Google... or even by asking any temple worker in any temple.

I didn't write my answer until 104 hours. A lot of temple stuff is hard to Google and people give up on that route.

Craig Jessop wrote:A lot of his answers recently have caused me to say okaaaaaaaaay dude, whatever you want.

Yep. And it's not just the personality/writing voice. There have been writers that I disagreed with about almost everything it's possible to disagree with, but I still respected for writing kickass answers. Professor Kirke comes to mind–hated his politics but man, that kid could research and write.

If you don't know an answer and can't find out, don't answer it. This isn't an essay portion on a test, no one cares about partial credit.
If you answer something, provide value. Make it informative, make it useful, make it interesting, make it funny. Make it something. Go the extra mile. Otherwise, what's the point?

This message brought to you from Cranky Old Alumni Incorporated.

Well, okay, except. We all had those answers that just sat around in the inbox that no one touched and everyone is busy so you give the best you have and that'll have to do it. It's a volunteer organization, after all, and that question isn't exactly going to change anyone's life.

Then Zed comes along at 104 hours, writes an answer, and maybe it's approved before SNB even has a chance to see the new answer and possibly remove his own as redundant.

TheBlackSheep wrote:Well, okay, except. We all had those answers that just sat around in the inbox that no one touched and everyone is busy so you give the best you have and that'll have to do it. It's a volunteer organization, after all, and that question isn't exactly going to change anyone's life.

Then Zed comes along at 104 hours, writes an answer, and maybe it's approved before SNB even has a chance to see the new answer and possibly remove his own as redundant.

+1. This is actually how it normally happens.

Seems like the best thing to do would've been for the editors, after Zed's more substantial answer, to take that back to SNB and see if he wanted to delete his less substantive answer.

There's been discussion of this in the past, Marduk. I think it would be a very good thing. From what I recall (and these are recollections from over a year ago, so I may be wrong), the issue is that a comprehensive method of doing what you're suggesting would be difficult to implement, and an ad-hoc method (which is more or less what the Board currently has) would lead to many answers, such as this one, falling through the cracks. I still think there's room for improvement, even given those constraints, but that's the framework surrounding the discussion.