If you come across an answer that is just a link (no explanation, description of the link's content etc) what should be done? It didn't seem to fit under any of the flags...
1 Answer
Flag it as "Not an answer" or "Low Quality Answer" and comment in the thread to answerer, that he should supply more information:
While this may theoretically answer the question, we prefer inclusion of the essential parts of the answer here, and to provide the link for reference. See answer for general guidelines.
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3And please feel free to down-vote the answer as well - that's what the vote buttons are for ;-)– SPDoctor ModCommented Oct 8, 2013 at 8:25
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If the answer entails code (C#/PowerShell) and the link points to the code then a link should suffice with a brief description. Copying/Pasting the same code might not be pretty nor acceptable IP practice especially if no credit is given to the original code in the link. Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 18:15
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3@SBChatterjee problem is, the link can become rotten. If you had replicated the content otherwise the problem is no more. So we should try to encourage people to post at least the general idea right in the answer. That said, credit should always be given Commented Oct 10, 2013 at 10:30
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good point about rotten (dead) links that can make the answer empty. Commented Oct 10, 2013 at 11:19
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3@SBChatterjee the key is the "brief description". There's lots of people who post "See <link>". There's a world of difference between that and even "You need to use SPFoo.Bar, there's a full example at <link>". To see what happens when one allows just links, check out the MS forums. It just makes my day when someone has a problem that's similar to mine, and someone's answered with a link referring to another post, where the other post just referred to 3 different blog postings which are now all dead.– lgaudCommented Oct 11, 2013 at 17:34
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1Iguad, if I had $1 for every time, I'd be a rich man. Here is something related: xkcd.com/979 Commented Nov 1, 2013 at 19:33