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I'll keep it brief. Browsing the site today and saw this: Is the ultimate purpose of life only to serve God?

There are 7 answers on there, and except for jabahar, everyone just gave some wishy washy "here is what I think" answer. His answer was the only one truly from a "Hinduism" point of view and it had appropriate citations and discussion.

I know moderators should exercise their powers very sparingly, but answers like those really make this site low quality and just increase "visual noise" to sort through when looking for answer. Luckily, jabahar's answer was at the top. On some other questions, it may not be.

At what point do we go in and say, "OK, this answer is completely irrelevant and does not contribute to the question and we're deleting it?"

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  • 2
    Update: You need to backup your personal opinion/experience with authentic sources. Visit this for more information.
    – Pandya Mod
    Apr 21, 2017 at 3:01

2 Answers 2

6

Side note: For most of the users who don't have sufficient privileges to view deleted answers, its just 6 answers for them and not 7.

Coming to the question, it has around 2.5K views so the question was listed in Hot Network Questions for sure, so when any of the question enters into Hot Network Questions list, users who visit the site may register if they find the content interesting and hence some of them try to answer such questions, so basically these users are not aware of the rules.

Now obviously moderators shouldn't use their powers wrongly, so an answer should be deleted if it is :-

  • Totally wrong, off-topic (question is something else and answer is something else),
  • Comment like answer (if useful, convert that into a comment)
  • Thank you answer
  • Rude/Offensive
  • Providing ONLY scientific reasons
  • Cross religion answer, explaining other religions philosophy (depends on the question though)

So what you should do?

Downvote them all. We cannot delete the answers unless they are surely wrong or makes no sense. Even if users flag such answers then the flags should be rejected.

BUT

Site is in beta stage with lack of users with sufficient privileges. So if required, you should close the questions straight away and delete answers if they suffice any of the points I've mentioned above. It will help increasing the overall quality of the site and also once the user count grows, it won't be possible to close and delete the old content.

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I agree with @Mr.Alien that We cannot delete the answers unless they are surely wrong or makes no sense.

Also, from @BeHappy's answer to Guidelines for new users answering questions which received 17 upvotes as of today:

3. If no such text references are present, then users can provide answers which they have learned or heard about the culture from parents and others. (If their answers are authentic then other users might be able to provide references to their source scripture.)

So I request the moderators to undelete this answer which obviously fits into the exact scenario mentioned above. It was discussed in this meta post.

Moderator actions cannot and should not contradict the guidelines!

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