What is the rationale for not allowing answers during the definition phase?

Question

What is the rationale for not allowing answers during the definition phase of a proposal? My naive understanding of this phase's purpose is that it helps define the topic and audience for a proposed site, and I would contend that candidate answers and tags contribute to that almost as much as questions. Were there solid reasons for excluding answers and tags from that phase?

The same question could be asked for the commitment phase as well, and for this one, I would suggest that being able to answer questions during the commitment phase could help build a knowledge base that would be extremely useful during the beta phase, especially if the commitment phase is to go on for several months. It should not serve as a substitute for the beta phase, but I like to believe that some middle ground could be found during which commitment is properly assessed, while a body of knowledge is being prepared.

Answer 1

I understand your eagerness to get these questions answered. But part of building a Stack Exchange site is to make sure the participants can properly build a reliable canon of knowledge.

The core reason we created Stack Exchange was to assure that information posted on the Internet is widely vetted, edited, and improved by a thriving community of peers. Area 51 provides NONE of those capabilities.

The aptly named "example questions" of Area 51 are only posted to help define the scope. That's it. But it is not a Q&A site. When unwary Internet travels come across these posts through search, we don't want to be the source of half-baked answers to rhetorical and largely incomplete questions.

Just winging an answer wherever someone finds a place to type goes against why we so meticulously curate these sites in the first place. Hang on to your answers; these questions can be properly answered soon enough… when the Q&A site is created.

Answer 2

The purpose of the example questions is that they help define what is supposed to be on-topic for the site. Answers would simply be noise; they're not supposed to be answered yet. Even worse, if you could answer them, people would start to treat it as a functioning site.

Answer 3

answering questions is indeed distracting from the very purpose of the definition phase. I made the mistake myself, I'm used to think ahead a little.

However, I agree with the proposal to store the answers that get censored though. once decision on the kind of questions being acceptable is finalized, the kind of answers that are on-topic and possible tags IMHO should be discussed too. also when the site starts, it would be nice to have some pre-answered questions and tags already. not all sites here are as popular as askubuntu or stackoverflow, for some it's a struggle to get actual content.

so the rationale behind this decision obviously is to speed up reading for visitors in this phase. the faster they can skim through present questions, the more likely they will leave a question of their own. guess that's also the reason why example-questions should be short.

the downside of such an automatism is that there cannot be much teach-by-example kind of sites here. i.e. if the allowed questions are only questions starting with "give me an example of by answering:", then it is difficult to convey what kind of examples that particular site has to offer when answers aren't allowed.

Answer 4

It is obviously sensible that there is no interface to write answers to example questions. However I think that answers in comments shouldn't necessarily be deleted, for a simple reason:

The quality and nature of an answer can shed light on the quality of the question.

Example:

• Q: "What is 2 + 2?" A: "It's 4. Simple." Lesson learned: The question is too easy.

On the other hand, if somebody can present a good answer to a question, the question is likely to be good.

So my opinion on answers is: An answer to an example question is useful exactly if it is used to demonstrate the quality or lack of quality of the question.

Answer 5

This answer is too compact. Please don't down-vote because of simplicity.

The point is to follow/commit so that you wait less, answering too early is not the point. We want to create sites, not place-bos. Waiting is the motivation to follow/commit, NOT to throw answers.