Should LinkedIn stop allowing the person who originated the question to delete unwanted answers?

Alison's Contribution:

My gut reaction is NO. I think it is a useful facility for the Asker to control the kinds of Answers they get. Quite often, Answers assume a life of their own and go off on a tangent which isn't helpful to the Asker.

Each individual can ask 10 questions a month so that should be sufficient to enable those who have tangental questions to pose their queries.

For instance, I could attempt to hijack this conversation to raise the other important issue of how to rate answers. Just because an answer is rated BEST doesn't mean that it is factually correct. Many people lose the opportunity of a GOOD rating simply because the disagreed with the preset disposition of the Asker rather than the basis of their argument.

So if you are going to delete the facility to remove answers, you should also remove the facility to rate answers - it seems only fair.

No doubt you'll get a wide variety of views. Hope you enjoy the discussion and it gives you what you really need - even if that wasn't what you sought in the first place.

All the best,

Alison
Clarification added 1 second ago:
Having had time to think about it again, I've come to slightly different conclusion and found myself agreeing with you... Isn't it great to have the opportunity to change your mind?

Now, the challenge I see is how to make it work without creating an overhead of administration and "make work" for someone. For example, when you really needed to delete an answer - spam, blatant abusive remarks, etc - how quickly could that be accomplished if you had to had someone double checking each by hand, doing the analysis and taking action. You may need to have a group of "Raters" perform this function.

Questions this raises (instantly for me):
What would you do with the answer whilst it was being assessed? What would be the time lag? How might the thread go off course during this time? What would it cost?

My suggestion for the first question is that the offending answer disappears for during assessment and reappears if it is deemed to not break the rules.

I'm going to park the conundrum of flagging answers as that too can lead to an abuse of power.

So, in summary, my final question for today is.

If we did decide to change how it works, what would be the best way of dealing with the (unforeseen) impacts that we will face?

Hope this helps,

Alison
posted 9 days ago