tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Bait Answers)

François G. Dorais comments on "Bait Answers" (4857)

2010-04-20T11:47:29-07:00

Ah! I see that my choice of title was misleading. Setting the bait is not really the main problem, it's the type of responses that it entails.

François G. Dorais comments on "Bait Answers" (4855)

2010-04-20T11:37:00-07:00

Ben, I don't find this particular case to be problematic; knowing the author's style (and the subject matter) relatively well, I know that nothing fishy is going on. The question is about the etiquette of such behavior in general, which is why I omitted some details from the example situation. This scenario just doesn't seem to fit the MO model of "straight Q & A" since the follow-up question was more-or-less addressed to a specific user, as a follow-up question in a discussion would be. (There are other examples of this, this one is simply more obvious than others I can think of.)

Ben Webster comments on "Bait Answers" (4853)

2010-04-20T10:26:44-07:00

I think you should more clearly explain what you thought was problematic about this. It seems perfectly reasonable to me, and I certainly have no desire to try to police it. This is a site for people ask questions and get answers to them; is it really so wrong to make some hints about what questions you would answer?

It's clear from the length Andrej's answer that he should not have just tacked it onto the previous answer, and asking the question served a valuable purpose, in that the asker got to specify particularly what he was wondering about. To me, this is a great example of the site working exactly as it should.

Harry Gindi comments on "Bait Answers" (4850)

2010-04-20T09:28:52-07:00

I think he was trying to be cute about it and meant no harm, but I don't think that we should allow that kind of thing in the future.

François G. Dorais comments on "Bait Answers" (4849)

2010-04-20T08:25:48-07:00

I'm puzzled about the etiquette in this situation. This particular situation seems harmless to me, but I think similar situations can be problematic.

This answer ends with "but you'll have to ask another question to find out why :-)" Sure enough, someone took the bait in this question. The question is phrased in such a way that a third party could answer it, but it is obviously addressed to a particular user.

Asking a question to clarify an existing answer is certainly fine, but ending an answer with a prompt to do that is sketchy. I was tempted to vote for closing the question, but I couldn't find a convincing reason and I really want to know the answer in this particular case.

Anyway, what do people think about this?