How can we promote our apparent goal of getting well-sourced answers?

Question

I've been away from Phil.SE for a while, aside from the occasional lurking, and I recently noticed something. There are (more than I remember) a large number of answers that don't attempt to provide any external sources.

This other meta-question covers some related issues, and suggests there's a policy of encouraging links to external resources, with Keelan's answer quoting the help center as saying that "Links to external resources are encouraged,...". So, we seem to have a policy of encouraging well-sourced answers (which is a policy I love; I might even support a stronger policy of banning unsourced answers entirely, except for "show your work" kind of answers, e.g., a logic problem).

So my question is, assuming we want to encourage well-sourced answers, how might we best go about it? I've been downvoting (since they often also drift firmly into the "subjective answer" category) and leaving comments explaining the reason for the downvote and trying to encourage them to expand upon their answer with references to some of the relevant work.

Is there anything else we could do?

Answer 1

On this site more than anywhere else I (we) seem to have the problem of users who

1. Do not follow our policy
2. Have conflicting ideas about what is a good answer
3. Are absolutely convinced their ideas are correct
4. Refuse to engage in a mature discussion about their ideas
5. Refuse to adhere to our policy

As a recent example, take this 'discussion'.

This poses a problem, and makes, in my experience, this one of the hardest sites to moderate across the SE network.

I have the impression that this confusion of mostly new users is because there is no summary of our policy. There is the help center, and the tour, but neither really go into details about how we think this particular site is to be moderated. There are meta questions, but when are they authoritative, and which question should I look at?

I am thus in favour of a policy like Skeptics.SE. In this policy it should be very clear (a) when references are needed, and (b) that answers that need references will be removed when the author fails to provide references within a reasonable time limit (say, a day?).

Ultimately, if users keep refusing to adhere to that policy, they should be banned. It is not a very good use of the time of any of us to keep deleting answers of the same users over and over again.

What should be in our policy?

I'd say, at least the following:

• Answers should be objective.

  Questions like "Is it ethical to...?" should be answered in the format "A [Kantian] would say ..., because ... (see ...)".

  Questions about things as formal logic don't necessarily need references, because they're often easily backed by any introductory textbook or can at least be easily verified (by the OP and the community, through voting).

  Answers that are not objective or not verifiable will be removed.

• Questions that stimulate subjectiveness will be edited or closed.

• Comments should be posted in the same spirit as questions and answers.

• We strive for high quality here. It is not necessary to speak perfect English, but chat abbreviations is frowned upon and punctuation is encouraged. Write as if you were writing something to publish.

This is a just a start. If there is sufficient support for a policy / welcome message in general, it would perhaps be good to open a separate meta question to flesh that out, and then a final meta question to actually have that policy exposed (preferably written by a moderator, to show some authority).

Answer 2

We should have a policy like Skeptics.SE

Properly sourced answers are better-factored for StackExchange. An answer that "shows its work" has greater pedagogical value. It serves as a kind of minimum quality filter, and may help focus discussion around particular thinkers and texts.

Answer 3

Providing sources obviously takes more time, but it requires .. and reflects .. additional rigor. I appreciate it when I see it, and I find I am fairly quickly motivated to return the favor.

Maybe the best approach is threefold:

• prominent FAQ & policy guidance
• providing positive comments (aka "thank you's") as reinforcement when useful references are provided
• leadership by example

Some shorthand simplifies the task, if allowed. Maybe a few title keywords in italics, and the year? Chasing down section refs, page numbers and publishers can consume hard to find cycles.

Confession & disclaimer: some of my answers/comments are penned at the coffeeshop. Dog earred they may be, but I don't always have Aristotle & Kant in tow :)

Answer 4

Good question!

If a good percentage of the community referenced questions and answers then it might be easier to suggest users should do so, without driving people away.

It does take some work to reference a good answer; especially if it's to a book; which is why I often opt for the SEP.

It might be a little easier if there were standard places where one could go for citations.

Some canonical texts have standard ways of citation, I've noticed. Like Kant, Wittgenstein, Aristotle - it would be nice if one could simply type in [Phys:217a3] and have that link directly to a standard citation service point - it's saves looking things up and typing them out.

Having said that, no doubt doubt we'll get walls of citations, rather than walls of text - as a form of textual abuse!