i can understand why a policy like that would be desirable but it seems dogmatic and counterproductive to apply it to every situation

If someone wants to google something, they don't need to know or care about how tcp/ip work

It seems overly noisy to require one to link plugin source just to mention that it solves the problem in question

@jsuth I'm on the record as believing that plugin-only answers should be improved, but never deleted. But so far, the community does not agree with me. If you do, though, you should go upvote my answer on meta, above. (Or write your own answer if you think you can express it the argument more persuasively!)

@Rich, it seems I'm one of the few (the only one?) To have upvoted your answer. I'm from the old school where RTFM and SFTW are perfectly valid answers for recurring Q/A. Also if there is a tool behind the link and/or the name that do the job, I'm don't think it's SO/vi.SE place to duplicate its documentation, as it will never be up-to-date with the latest version of the tool.

I agree we could have plugin only answers that could be expanded later on, and possibly kept up-to-date. But unfortunately, the majority doesn't agree.

@LucHermitte It's got three upvotes (and three downvotes), so looks like there are four of us :)

@jsuth The OP is asking about how to do something with the "ranger.vim" plugin. Your answer seems to be "here, try this other similar plugin instead". Perhaps I misunderstood your answer? But it seems to me that this isn't really an answer to the question, as such. There are dozens of file manager plugins out there, and I believe that a good portion of them can replace netrw out of the box or with a simple setting, and I don't think that adding dozens of answers for that would be very useful.

That, more than anything else, is why I deleted it. I would have edited it with some more information on how to use the plugin if it was a solution to the answer.

> it's not like github urls are going to disappear from the face of the internet

Well, Google Code links "disappeared from the face of the internet" :-)

@Rich In some cases, just a link to a plugin is an acceptable answer, but in many cases people are asking about a specific feature that a plugin provides, or a specific way in which to use a plugin. Providing a link to a plugin is akin to answering "how can I replace my computer's mainboard" with "use screwdriver". Sure, it's not wrong, but it's also not all that helpful.