I thought it might be wise to have us come up with a list of good, general guidelines to follow when posting answers to various questions. Obviously, everyone has their own opinion about how to go about things, but I was just wondering if anyone had additional suggestions. Here are some of mine:
- Try to post links to external resources whenever you can. It costs nothing to the reader (besides some text being a different colour), and allows them to better their own knowledge on a particular subject (should they have the desire to do so). Think of posting links like commenting code (post more links then you feel is necessary).
- Be concise in your writing. Avoid using extraneous words ("fluff" words) in your writing, and remember,
quality != quantity.
I wanted to post this as the equivalent of a coding standards document for a programmer. As a community, hopefully this will help direct the flow and quality of the answers we post in the future, and give people general ways to focus their writing. Your suggestions can be about pretty much anything related to writing answers (form, quality, formatting, etiquette, respect, etc...).
It has also come to my attention (thanks slhck) that there already exists some answer guidelines posted on the SU website. Hopefully we can help to expand the list on that page, either by offering new suggestions, or expanding the existing ones.
