Are answers that just contain links elsewhere really &good answers&? - Meta Stack Exchange
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I have often wondered at the practice on Stack&Overflow, Server&Fault, and the other sites where someone will ask a question and an answer will come in that says Look here: http://link elsewhere. Rarely will the link have exactly the answer necessary -- often it's an entire article -- yet these answers get voted up.
Why is that, exactly? I realize this is subjective, but my own thoughts are that one should try and give the answer (even if the answer is 'no, it can't be done' or 'no, I don't think it can be done' -- very different answers) and then if you have a link that explains it, go ahead and post it within the answer.
What does the community think about this?
For more information, see
I think that links are fantastic, but they should never be the only piece of information in your answer.
An analogy would be if you are standing at 100 Main St. and you ask where 98 Main St. is. A good answer would be
"It is the next building over". points at building
If you instead include a link, you are saying
"I'll direct you to a tourism information booth, and they will be able to provide you with your answer and much more!"
Which is great, however, you haven't answered their question at all, you've deferred the answering to somewhere else. And in this (fictitious) case the person has to take quite a detour to get to their destination.
When someone goes on Stack Overflow, the question "answer" should actually contain an answer. Not just a bunch of directions towards the answer. You should provide context to all your links, otherwise the OP will have no idea what they are clicking into.
I think of all my answers on Stack&Overflow as if they are technical emails to a client. And unless the client asked "Can you resend that link?" there is no excuse for sending them an official email with only links.
It's also a way of saying "I have absolutely no value beyond a search using a common search engine." Which is completely untrue, so why sell yourself short?
is a whole other reason why "only links" is a terrible response.
While they will sometimes not have the answer necessary, in my experience they often do.
It's always nice to include a summary of the content and how it pertains to the question, but if I were asking a question which was already answered well on another site, I'd certainly rather have the link than nothing!
A link alone as an answer is a bad answer in my book.
Links break and the answer becomes worthless later even if the linked material answered the question initially.
At least if you include a summary, the answer can somewhat stand on its own.
See the fledgling FAQ on .
What if the question is something like, "Where can I find the documentation on numeric format strings for C#?"
Of course, in that case the entire correct answer is:
Generally, including a summary is good idea.
But saying a link only is always bad isn't exactly right either, especially if that link points back to "official" documentation of some kind.
When I ask a question I am very happy if someone posts a link that quickly that solves my problem!
- This is much better than if they decided they did not have enough time to post a “good” answer.
However when I read an interesting question I would rather I could learn something from the answer without having to look at other websites etc.
There is nothing stopping someone else that has more time reading the linked page and writing a more complete answer – then we get the best of both worlds.
I believe it is not good practice (although have been guilty of it myself). What happens if the link ceases to exists? The answer becomes worthless. I would prefer to paste the main gist of the answer into the answer so if the link ever goes down for whatever reason then the answer is still valid.
A large majority of my answers involve providing demo's of code via a live pastebin, however if these external sites go down, what is the point? I have pushed for a Stack Overflow pastebin to minimise this risk, but so far it has fallen on deaf ears.
Another situation I do not see discussed here is similar to link rot.
A lot of users on Stack Overflow work for corporations. It is possible that Stack Overflow is not blocked by the company firewall, but the site you link to is. This could be the same if sites are blocked in certain regions, etc.
Following random links on webpages might be some people's view of the Internet, but it could turn into a security nightmare.
Note: Even if Stack Overflow handles bad links (through a flag system, or preemptive discovery), system administrators would still discourage clicking user submitted links.
You can also always hover over the link to see where it points before going there, but some people use URL shorteners, so this would not help every case.
Anyone coming to this answer here at the bottom knows no one likes links, so I actually do something about it and leave a custom comment instead of a canned one:
Although your answer is 100% correct, it might also become 100%
if that link is moved, changed, merged into another one or
the main site
just disappears... :-( Therefore, please [edit]
your answer, and copy
the relevant steps from the link into your
answer, thereby guaranteeing
your answer for 100% of the lifetime of
this site! ;-) You can always
leave the link in at the bottom of
your answer as a source for your
material...
Standard SE rules for (C) apply (meaning: copy and use and don't credit me: the SE family of sites as a whole will become better!)
For easy copy-pasting, herez the codez:
Although your answer is 100% correct, it might also become 100% useless
if that link is moved, changed, merged into another one or the main site
just disappears... **:-(** Therefore, please [edit] your answer, and copy
the relevant steps from the link into your answer, thereby guaranteeing
your answer for 100% of the lifetime of this site! **;-)** You can always
leave the link in at the bottom of your answer as a source for your
material...
One of the problems with a "link only" answer is that, as time goes on, links change or go away.
I can't tell you how many times I've Googled something, come across a forum question that pertains to what I need to know, and there's an answer that says, Look here : .
I click on it and it takes me to a completely unrelated site, or an "error 404 - page not found".
If the answer I needed was in the post itself, it wouldn't matter how old it is, the information would never "time out".
It depends a lot on the context. I wrote an open source VPN client and although I run a mailing list to which anyone can post, without having to subscribe, and I clearly invite people to do so if they have problems, I still occasionally do a web search and find that people have been asking questions on random web forums instead of asking me (and my other users/developers, who can also often help) about the software I wrote.
I'll often go to the trouble of signing up for these web forums just so I can post an answer to the question, which is often months old and unanswered by the time I see it — although it would have got an immediate response if asked in the right place.
And when I do, I'll try to give a simple answer if the answer is obvious and doesn't involve a debugging session with the user. But often, a person who is confused enough to post their question in the wrong place is also confused enough that they don't include enough (or indeed any) of the pertinent debugging information in their post either.
My experience is that with these random web forums, I often won't get decent notification of a reply. They often send from bogus addresses which fail sender verification, or just don't send notifications at all. So the a round-trip of me asking a question, the OP answering it, and then me eventually thinking a week or so later that perhaps I should check this web site again if I can actually remember where it was, can take a very long time.
So I will definitely always tell people asking about my software on random web forums (this one included, although it's one of the saner ones) to use the proper channels for support, if they want me to help them.
I have a case where a user wants to know how to create a certain feature in iOS. A textual answer to the question would be:
unmaintained
poorly coded
poorly documented
In answering this question I linked to a project that solves the askers problem in a much better way than the other answers.
My answer was deleted because it was just a link.
Am I supposed to copy the entire text contents of the GitHub repo onto StackOverflow?
I think sometimes a textual answer is not the best way to go.
I recognize the problem of dead links but I think it's a problem that can be dealt with when it occurs.
As it stands any user who read the question I'm talking about in the past year and relied on one of the answers is using an inferior and finicky solution while my github repo is still right where it was when I linked to it.
I think that everyone on Stack Overflow are professionals. They do jobs, research, write books, and run companies. In short, they all Are DAMN BUSY persons.
And still they are on Stack Overflow to help others. Like in my case (I am an Android developer), I know a few GREAT personalities like CommonsWare and Romain Guy, and many more are there who are on Stack Overflow and share their excellent experience and knowledge on Android. Thanks to them.
So in any case, if they just give a link pointing to any of their examples, blogs, books... That is a very good answer for me, and it's not at all a BAD ANSWER.
If anyone comes and downvotes those answers, just because it's only a link, that's not at all right.
My thinking: Everyone is BUSY in their life, still helping others and so in this case we should not judge their answer this way. The answers containing only links are NOT BAD ANSWERS.
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