Disagree with a Deletion

Question

This question

The comment from L-Dutch states:

"The first line is at most a comment to the OP's question. The rest, being based on nothing that the OP asked, is not an answer"

However, this ignores what the OP said:

"Say hypothetically, an entire American airbase with many extremely modern aircraft is instantaneously transported to the 1400s."

Now, my answer was to first point out that the choice of aircraft for what was being described was a poor choice - a Fleet Defense fighter (that was designed to stop Russian Heavy Bombers from getting within Anti-Ship Missile range of a Carrier group) was the wrong choice of Aircraft.

However, since the frame of the question was 'Many extremely modern aircraft' - this gives the answerer (me) scope to recommend what would be appropriate - which is any ground-attack aircraft in the US Arsenal.

This gives us a choice between the A-10, the F-35, F15 Strike Eagle, Apache Attack Helicopter yadda yadda yadda - you get the picture.

In the scenario - the best choice would be an A-10, since you don't need to fly high or fast or stealthy - flying low and slow and creating as big a bang as possible is as per the story requirements what was needed.

Then outlining what would be the likely effects - First a dry run, then a gun run and if the Army still held their nerve, a Cluster Bomb run - which would break any medieval army's will to fight.

TL;DR - I disagree with the reason it was deleted - I think the deletee didn't read the question properly and so thought I wasn't answering the question asked. and I'm Salty and want it re-instated cause I liked that answer.

Answer 1

You Said it Yourself

As a matter of full disclosure, I voted to close the question for being story based.

The fundamental reason that I can see for this particular answer to be closed is that it specifically doesn't answer the question, which asks about F14s, not anything else the base command could throw at the invaders.

Worse, the answer doesn't even present a frame challenge. A frame challenge is any assertion that challenges the premise or underpinnings of a question. The given answer says that the F14 won't be a good choice, which is a good start but does nothing to support the assertion. Yes, the answer does say that the F14 is a 'fleet defense aircraft', but what does that even mean in the context of a medieval army attack? Technically speaking, nothing in that base is designed to be an anti-mounted-knight-cavalry weapon system.

What you're asking for won't work because of X, but you could alternatively consider Y. If the answer had a section "because of X" that described why the F14 won't be effective against mounted knights and medieval armies then it would be a good frame challenge.

As it stands, I'd concur that the answer was deleted properly.

Another fairly obvious reason is the one you provided yourself as respondent:

In the scenario - the best choice would be an A-10, since you don't need to fly high or fast or stealthy - flying low and slow and creating as big a bang as possible is as per the story requirements what was needed.

By your own admission, fully aware that you're dealing with a story based question, it was technically improper to even answer the question. The best practice would be to vote to close the question and / or aske the querent to edit to make it a worldbuilding question.

That said, I am not completely adverse to answering story based questions. But they have to be really good ones! This question doesn't rise to that level in my opinion, therefore I would be more likely to support deletion in this case than I would for a better question.

Answer 2

Allow me to use an analogy to explain what the problem was with your alleged answer.

If the questions would have been:

Little Tommy has 10 Euros in his pocket. He is in the supermarket and he is hungry. Considering that cookies costs 1 Euro each, how many cookies can Little Tommy buy?

You answer was

Cookies will not fill Little Tommy. He can buy a pizza tuna and onion with 6 Euro and use the change for a soda.

You just gave a little comment at the beginning of the post, and then went completely along the tangent with assumptions that were nowhere in the question.

There is no way that that would be an answer to the question, and by posting it you were bounding the OP, in case they wanted to edit the question to have reopened, to comply with your assumptions, not with their worldbuilding problem.

And for the 1000th time, "I liked my answer" it's nowhere close to be a valid reason for not deleting an answer.

Answer 3

Don't make assumptions, ask for details instead

Please note I don't have access to your original, deleted answer.

Answer well-asked questions

Not all questions can or should be answered here. Save yourself some frustration and avoid trying to answer questions which [should be closed]...

^{How do I write good answers?}

Answers should reliably... Well, answer the question to be considered as such and avoid deletion. As an expert in strategy, you should know that the outcomes could vary a lot because of battle circumstances and goals : If you have say 10 000 religious fanatic opponents coming from all sides and detected very late, 20 or even 50 planes wouldn't be enough to handle them just because they wouldn't have been able to take off in time. Also, the exact army compositon is not told : After the first attack, what apparels exactly are still operating? Finally, we lack the goals of the US military : If the base defense is more important than anything else, they would have gone all guns blazing from the very start and wipe out everything in a 100km area, just to be sure. But since it's not told, it could have been to avoid another diplomatic disaster, with a totally different approach (intimidation, talks...). This shows a lack of forethought from the querent on both strategic goals and context. As much as it can be entertaining, it's not your job to think that for them, as it's both dependent on what they want to tell and what they already established in their world/story. Any assumption can lead you astray from the querent's actual situation, so avoid them whenever it's possible.

I think there isn't just enough to answer the question : "What is the likelihood the jets would reach their goal (supposedly, defend the base)?". I have a checklist when people ask about strategy :

• How many forces are there exactly and which kind? What are they equipped with?
• What is their starting locations : Facing each others and far away, cornered and at close-range?
• Where are they fighting : On mountains, plains, forest, desert, asteroid field...
• What did the general chose to do? What troops are they sending, against what and for which reason? Recall that questions asking what an army or soldier would do is off-topic (story-based), and questions lacking those can implicitly ask them (not the case here, but not everyone shares my point of view).
• Are there special battle conditions : Storm happening, very low morale to fight, surprise attack...?

If any of these is not described, it's likely lacking too much details to be answered without building the world and story in their stead. Ideally, the question should also focus on one individual part of the battle, as to move as much as possible individual decisions and make the resulting probabilities as accurate as possible. For instance, the question "How well would a flamethrower tank fare against a normal one in an urban battle?" would lead to more accurate, more objective answers than "How well would this army of flamethrower tanks and rocket 'copters fare against this army of normal tanks and rifle soldiers in an urban battle?".

To sum-up, accuracy is key when asking tactic questions. If the question lacks too much details, its answers -such as yours- are more likely to miss the target. If there's any doubt your answer would not meet the querent's needs -whether through your own observation or others-, ask for details. And remember : You're not forced to answer the question right as it gets out of the oven.

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Addendum from comments : To be clear, I'm not writing here that your answer doesn't tackle the question in an absolute way, just that it's impossible to know due to the way the question is written. Guiding undecisive people towards your restricted vision of their world and intentions can be equally beneficial or nefarious to them. As such, it can balance out the expected value of your answer to zero. It means effectively the answer has a too high-chance to not answer the question plus the user's needs, and so risks deletion for that reason.

Answer 4

In support of @Tortliena's answer, and in response to @JamieB's answer (which is only his opinion)...

From the Help Center: Why and how are some answers deleted?

Answer posts that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are:

• commentary on the question or other answers
• asking another, different question
• "thanks!" or "me too!"-type responses
• exact duplicates of other answers
• barely more than a link to an external site (i.e. the actual answer is not included in the post)
• not even a partial answer to the actual question

The exception is a Frame Challenge, but in full agreement with @Elemtilas, frame challenges are expected to be thorough. I will gladly grant that your answer did approach the intent of a frame challenge — except that the question was (and remains) so ill-prepared that the value of the challenge is entirely lost.

I could list a dozen fundamental problems with the context of the question, its purported rules of time travel, etc., not the least of which is why are we focusing on F-14s when fifty soldiers carrying XM5s and 300 rounds each could level nearly any medieval army?

But at the top of my list of complaints about the question was (and is):

How effective will the jets be against this army, and what do you think what happen from then? Please explain in detail.

Emphasis mine. That's a classic High Concept Question and they are off topic.

It's not enough to expect querents to ask good questions.[1] [2] [3] We should also expect respondents to post good answers. [4]

Frankly, upon review, I believe your answer violated bullets #1 and #6 of the "Why and how are some answers deleted" list and ignored the whole "answer well-asked questions" section of the Help Center. Stack Exchange's goals include being a reference library of quality questions and answers that can help more people than the first person to ask the question. From that perspective, you should have voted to close the question.

In the end, IMO, chalk it up to experience. I've had questions and answers closed, hated, and deleted. It happens. Nobody likes to hear their baby called ugly. But even if you're sure in your heart that you're absolutely in the right regarding this matter, it's more valuable to everyone that you understand the objections. Honestly, we don't need more people answering anything they come across no matter how badly the question was asked. We need people to become leaders, helping however imperfectly to improve the site's quality and service.

My point? That OP needed to be asked why the questions about F-14s were so important to him. Because I don't believe the question the OP asked was addressing the actual problem the OP was having. If I'm right, then your answer didn't help the OP at all.

Answer 5

Community Bot works as expected.

The question was closed, had no answers, and had a negative score. Such questions are routinely deleted after about one week of inactivity. If the question would be undelete, the bot would cull it within a year.

The answer did not answer the question

The only deleted answer does not even attempt to discuss the actual question, backs up nothing and thus was correctly deleted.

Answer 6

Sounds like a deletion made in error.

I can't read your answer, either (10k rep required to read deleted answers) but it sounds like your answer was appropriate and on-topic. The goal here is to help people build worlds. Helping the author understand the distinction in the types of planes that could be parked there and what roles they might play would be an important part of helping him build his world.

I think sometimes deleters get caught up on "did you answer the question directly" when they should consider "does your answer help with the fundamental worldbuilding problem", i.e., when is the question not the actual problem.

In this case, OP wants to transport a military base to the past but isn't sure what that means in immediate practical terms. He has a lot of reading to do and an answer like yours sounds like it was is exactly what he needs: not a direct answer to his question per se, but an understanding and a starting point of what he actually needs to build his world and a start on what reading he needs to go do. A base full of C-17s is a lot different than a base full of A-10s or AC-130s or F-15s. The answer he needs is help defining the boundaries.

That's worldbuilding.

Deleting content should be reserved for egregious wrongs. In order for an answer to be deleted, it must be completely off-topic, clearly having nothing at all to do with the question, is simply spam, or the product of a chat program.

Deleting for any other reason is inappropriate.

I propose that the metric for deleting an answer should be similar to the metric for accepting a first time answer from the "first answers" queue.

I think about this whenever that queue pops up, and what's my metric for deciding what to do with it.

• It's a good answer. I would upvote it. Obviously I accept these.
• It's a meh answer. I would not upvote it or downvote it. I accept these because "is it a good answer" is not the metric. We're not trying to use our opinion to screen out answers that are less than fabulous.
• It's an answer, but I disagree with it or think it needs work. I accept these, too, actually. I might accept it and then downvote it and complain in the comments but I still accept it from the queue. My job isn't to shut down people who write answers I think could be better. My job in that queue is to help protect the site from defacement or spam.
• It's spam, or so off-topic that it appears entirely unrelated to the OP. These I reject.

I feel like I have a pretty good system here for accepting or rejecting first time answers. It's the same metric that moderators should use for deleting answers. "Is it spam?" "Does it literally have nothing to do with the topic?" Delete. Otherwise, use downvotes and comments, not deletions.