Moving questions posted as answers to new questions?

Question

What shall we do with "me too" questions which are posted as answers to other questions?

A recent example: https://genealogy.stackexchange.com/q/4091/1006.

On Meta.SE, there has been a discussion (not a feature request) Convert non-answers into new questions? which has been denied. In a comment there, @Shog9 suggested moving them using throw-away accounts so we don't have to clutter up our own accounts with other people's questions, but I consider that to be 1) unfriendly to the new user and 2) a really ugly work-around.

For questions like this GEDCOM merge issue, the new Q may not be distinct enough to be worth saving -- I see that there's no point in moving something to a new Q if it is going to be a duplicate and we only have to close it afterwards. But for other questions (e.g. about finding people), these "me too" responses might be salvageable.

Your thoughts?

Answer 1

As discussed at the links provided, such an answer is most often either of too poor a quality to make a good new question or a duplicate of the original question or both.

I'd therefore support continuing to delete such answers with a comment to the newbie explaining what has happened and why, and what they should do. (Easy for me to say as I can't delete answers any more but I vaguely remember a utility that reduces the workload for moderators in doing this: https://stackapps.com/questions/2116/autoreviewcomments-pro-forma-comments-for-se).

If the user has created an account, I'm pretty sure they'll see the comment in their inbox even if the answer is deleted but perhaps this should be checked. If they haven't created an account, I'm not sure how much effort we should invest in them...

On the rare occasions that there's something new in the answer that adds value to the original question, it should either be converted to a comment or new content added to the question with annotation to say where it came from and why it's been added.

Answer 2

If there were a "convert answer to question" button available to moderators, that would preserve ownership of the question by the original "answerer", then I would use it.

In the absence of that, I think that all we can do is ask the original "answerer" to copy/paste the content of their "answer" into a question, and delete the "answer" because it is Not An Answer.

Sometimes I may be slow to delete but as soon as I see a Not An Answer flag I feel obligated to do so.

I definitely do not think that bogus accounts should be created to re-post answers as questions on behalf of other users.

Answer 3

I admit I saw that recent "me too" and wasn't sure what to do about it. There was little extra value to extract from that post, so conversion to a question would not have helped. It clearly wasn't a proper answer, and I understand that the policy is to delete.

I'm leery of rapid deletion of such posts, particularly from new users, as I think it's more likely to drive the user away with no further contribution to the site. Other than deletion, though, I don't see an obvious "right" answer. Is there a way to mark and schedule deletion for a later date? (In a way that doesn't place an onerous load on moderation, obviously.)

Conversion to a comment on the original question might be better, perhaps, preserving the user's plaintext and removing clutter from the question while offering a chance for guidance on what an answer should (or shouldn't) be. Is that possible?