I feel as if a thousand poor defenseless questions cried out and were mass-edited, to clog up the recent changes feed :(

@Oddthinking Are moderators planning to delete this answer about AIDS or will you let it stay, downvotes and all?

@ChrisW I flagged it for an independent moderator to delete when there was rampant plagiarism. I felt I was too personally involved to do it myself. Then the plagiarism was cleaned up, and I cleared the flag myself.

I think the answer is risible*, but (as I keep trying to say on meta) we don't delete because the answer is wrong.

So it can stay, undeleted and downvoted, because it fits the rules (e.g. includes references)?

Yes.

* I just looked up the definition of the word "risible". I thought it meant provoking anger, but it means provoking laughter. So, wrong word.

@ChrisW Yes.

Risible = mocking laughter

@ChrisW Yeah, that wasn't what it provoked. I was getting angry (so I recused myself from taking much action but commenting.)

Sometimes answers with references are deleted. I suppose the explanation for that is when the references are too off-topic or "don't answer the question" ... e.g. (to take just one example of a reference which doesn't answer the question), when they provide indirect evidence.

@ChrisW Yes, sometimes people tackle a different question to the one originally posted. It isn't too common though.

We also use the "has no references" banner when it really should read "has insufficient references".

(From memory, there is a meta question requesting a change to the banner.)

A comment on an old meta-post? Is that all we have? Probably worth turning into a proper meta-question if that is the extent of it. Not tonight for me though. Bedtime.

does anyone know where Oddthinking's answer is on meta, which lists a hierarchy of credibility (with e.g. a meta-study at the top)?

Nice one, thank you.

@chrisw why did you remove your answer from meta (re: where are the rules?)

I liked it

Thank you for liking it. I removed it because I thought it wasn't good enough: given the answers which I've seen deleted recently, I felt I no longer knew what "the rules" are, in practice, and that therefore I shouldn't be trying to (inaccurately) answer that question. Therefore my question to Oddthinking, above, about this answer: I can use that as an exemplar of a 'wrong' answer which isn't deleted.

I want to edit my "rules" answer (especially the last part) before undeleting it again. I started to edit it recently (while it's still deleted): I didn't realize that an edit to a deleted answer would 'bump' the question to the top of the active view (which I guess is why you noticed I deleted that answer).

^ The question is whether the study is reliable. I'm tempted to criticise the study myself, by stating that it had no control group, and by noting that its own abstract claims that "these data were not statistically significant (P = 0.58)". However maybe that answer would be mere opinion of mine (i.e. off-topic) and what's needed instead is evidence of a recognized researcher, in the same field, doing a peer-review of it.

^ In fact, "is this study reliable" is the wrong question to ask anyway, unless this is the only study related to curcumin: instead of asking whether this study was reliable, it ought to be asking whether the claim is true.

Maybe it should be edited so. I don't think that criticizing the study is that good: at best it can give an inconclusive answer. The study did give an answer, which is "apparently not", but it's a poor quality study.

P=0.58 means that the result is likely to be chance. In the study they basically only claim safety (duh)

Go ahead and fix the question so it's about the news claim, and not something which is not claimed by the papet

@chrisw

a wrong but not deleted answer

@Sklivvz Yes, that's the one I was asking Oddthinking about. I noticed it had a "This post does not cite any references or sources" banner.

@Sklivvz I edited the Turmeric question. My edit might have invalidated the existing answer.

@chrisw most obviously wrong answers will have such a banner

See also skeptics.stackexchange.com/annotated-posts?tab=noticed

That answer has plenty of references; they're direct, on-topic references too. So it's IMO a poster child for your One thing that you may want to keep in mind, we tend to be strict about form, but liberal about content. comment.

OTOH perhaps that answer falls into this category: Many of them also happen to be wrong -- this is not a reason for deletion per se, the community decides if they are. On the other hand, answer which are wrong are very hard to reference, thus they'll eventually get deleted too.

Sometimes you delete answer which have references because the references don't in your opinion prove the point or don't answer the question. It's been difficult for me (and possibly hard for others too) to see where you draw the line.

^ Another example of where I'm not sure what's on-topic. I used to think that if you reference facts (i.e. the source of any numbers you use in calculations) then you can do arithmetic in your answer. Now I don't think so any more (because of all the answers to the "minimum wage" question having been deleted).