@Tiny I think the Stub idea is good, but if I'm to be frank, I think the question itself is a bit long...

(I actually tried to suggest an edit for you, but edit requests aren't allowed on non-tag-wiki posts.)

@Cullub It is, but I'm trying to address all the concerns that the community has and clarify everything that needs to be clarified. I don't know how I could make it shorter and still say everything that needs to be said.

@Cullub You could make gist on github and link it here.

Yeah, I totally get that. Maybe consider an extended TL;DR at the beginning with simple bullet points?

Maybe I'll do that.

Actually, would you mind putting the markdown from that question somewhere (here? a gist?) so I can copy-paste?

@TinyGiant

gist.github.com/Tiny-Giant/cd429f1d233f1048f3fd38ece2861780

Also @Tiny: Are partial answers encouraged? I feel like I've seen that somewhere, but I don't know where.

@Cullub They've always been allowed. The community has discouraged them historically through voting.

Before, they could always exist as comments, now they can't really any longer.

Ok. I wanted to add a link to something to that effect. I guess I'll just state it maybe.

@Cullub, sorry I edited the post again. You can get the source of the most recent edit via the edit history by clicking on the "source" link for the edit: meta.stackoverflow.com/revisions/…

it wasn't a big change.

O

No problem @Tiny

@Tiny check this out for a TL;DR. Kinda decided against trying to rewrite/reformat your question in any large way.

gist.github.com/cullub/7a18429764c95f70454fd5cee98b8163

room topic changed to Stub Answers: A chat room for discussion on meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/388135/… -- the recent SO Meta post about "This Answer is a Stub" (no tags)

I think that's a good start. I have some clarifications that I would like to make to it then I'll add it to the question.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I'm on my phone at the moment with limited editing capabilities so I will get on that when I get back to my computer

@cullub, I've included a TL;DR that borrows heavily from your proposed TL;DR. Thoughts?

I like it @tiny.

awesome.

I really didn't think this would be a controversial proposal.

Yeah, I think some people misunderstood, some people are just sore at anything to do with comments, and some people saw -20 and made it -21 just 'cause it was already -20

Who knows, it may end up catching on even if the initial voting on the post is what it is.

I'd consider an upvote, but it's not entirely clear for me to which kind of posts this proposal refers.

Purely technical answers: Sure, the stub concept could make sense

But is this also intended to be used for some of the ... ehrm... more controversial topics discussed here recently?

Regarding the latter: Even for the controversial topics, it could help to spread out the discussion over several answers. Instead of discussing 5 different points in the comments of a single Q, each point could be raised (if worthwhile) in an A, and the possible discussion could be done there - just to keep things more clean, civil and focused.

@Marco13 You've expressed that in a few different places, but always as comments which makes it hard to clarify and discuss your position. Doing it here keeps it out of view of the rest of the community. Would you consider posting an answer so that your position/concerns can be clarified and discussed?

I kinda like that view @Marco

FWIW

@Marco13 Regarding this message, that is part of the point.

@Marco13 That is also part of the point.

The specific question of whether your proposal aimed at non-technical questions is something that you could answer, or clarify in the question itself. E.g. you're talking about "partial answers", which may not make clear if this referred to "answers where only a certain aspect should be discussed". But in the spirit of the proposal (???) I added an answer at meta.stackoverflow.com/a/388173/3182664

@Marco13 I thought "If you feel you can expand on, improve, or clarify a stub in any way, while keeping the core idea intact, feel free to edit it." was sufficiently clear on that matter. Is it not?

Obviously if an edit changes an idea into an entirely different idea, it shouldn't be applied. This is to expand ideas that aren't fully considered, not to completely replace them with different ideas.

I'm not necessarily talking about answers that only address part of the question, but rather answers that aren't fully formulated or fleshed out.

As it stands, fully formulated answers that address only a specific part of the question aren't downvoted solely because they only address a specific part of the question. Those answers don't really have a problem in that way. They may be downvoted because people disagree or think the point is not useful, but it isn't generally expected that an answer on meta needs to address the entire question in order to be posted as an answer.

Partially formulated answers however, do have an inherent issue in that we have historically expected answers to be fully formulated before being posted and have downvoted such answers and commented along the lines of the author should have posted a comment. That isn't encouraged anymore so we need a third option. This is that third option.

I'll see if I can't put that into an edit to the question once I've had a bit of time to consider how it should be worded and presented.

Maybe the comparison to wikipedia and talking about "partial answers" gave me the impression that this was mainly applicable for technical answers. For non-technical answers, I mentioned some concerns (e.g. edit wars as the worst case). But specifically, I now wonder what (in your view) constitutes an answer as being "partial" and/or "not fleshed out".

I could vaguely imagine someone posting some initial thoughts, but relying on the community to fill the gaps seems difficult. If that's the point, I'd probably prefer a well-formulated answer that is "partial" in the sense that it covers only one aspect, over one that is "not fleshed out" in that it only presents a list bullet points with random things that may or may not be relevant (a somewhat malicious interpretation - that's not what you meant, of course)

No, think someone posts a suggestion in a comment. They haven't figured out all the details of how their suggestion would work or anything like that, just the core idea. Traditionally, someone may come along later, see that comment, and be inspired to write a fully fleshed out answer inspired by that core idea. They may have never thought of that by themselves, and the original author may not have had the experience to consider all aspects of the suggestion sufficiently.

Now such partial answer comments and the attempts to clarify and discuss those points are going to be deleted or moved to chat to fade into obscurity instead of making it to the proper answer state.

The whole point is to mitigate that, get a proper post started even if it isn't fully considered or fleshed out, and get that discussion and clarification happening under the answer, instead of in a comment thread to be deleted.

A bullet point list of random thoughts on the topic would absolutely not be a good use of this. Ideally the post would contain one core point or idea and invite the community to expand on that core idea with any considerations they may have, all the while forfeiting ownership to remove the normal ownership-edit barrier that exists.

If someone were to post a stub that said only "I don't like this idea" and invited the community to edit in all the reasons why they didn't like it, that would be a misuse of the concept. That isn't providing anything to be expanded on, and any expansion would be all over the place.