Have rules changed at ux.stackexchange?

Question

I'm wondering if something has changed and I'm not aware of. Not necessarily rules, but maybe mods have instructions by owners to make the site more friendlier an attract more visitors or whatever. Really don't know, just guessing possible reasons.

The thing is I'm seeing more and more chatty, opinionated and blatantly off topic questions being accepted as normal, which could support the "lighten the rules" fact. The curious part is that I'm also seeing some questions with valid and documented possible answers being closed and NEVER reconsidered. Saying this because I've mentioned a few times that the posible answers were extensively documented, and a few times I answered to show this, yet answers kept closed.

I've also observed that this has a correlation in answers, and now the "because I say so" answers are the norm and accepted without any support or proof, while documented answers are getting rarer and at some point "non desirable". This is just a hunch, but I see a lot of chatty answers being accepted, usually for chatty questions or people looking for validation for their own views, so documented answers would probably go against them. IMHO, this is lowering the quality of answers, but might be wrong, of course.

Anyways, this is not a rant, I do this for fun in work pauses, so it's not like I'm worried or anything, just would like to "get with the program" so to speak. And for this, I'd need to know what the program is since I feel a bit lost.

A suggestion

To improve quality of answers, wouldn't it be great to include references for answers, kind of what Yahoo answers does, and reward answers with references 1 or 2 upvotes by default, or maybe badges for certain amounts of documented answers, like 50 documented answers: bronze / 100 documented answers: silver / 200 documented answers: gold. This way answers would be improved almost automatically, and chatty "because I say so" answers will still be posible, but people asking questions may notice they're not desirable.

Edit

as per JonW request, just the latest I have seen the last few days for each case:

• Question put on hold as primarily opinion-based which has hundreds of documented answers
• Blatantly off topic question open, upvoted and with many primarily opinion-based answers

Answer 1

I don't see the trend that you're referring to. Some questions are borderline, and in those cases I weigh up whether I think it's possible to answer well, and whether or not the answers would be helpful to a broader audience.

Referring to the two examples that you listed:

1. That question is always going to be primarily opinion based unless the person that made the decision in the first place chooses to comment. I can guess why I think it's the case, but someone else can have another guess. There's simply never going to be a "right" answer, and so it falls outside of the guidelines of the site.

2. Yes, it's a borderline question, but in essence it's asking whether animated screens inherently are better than non-animated screens. Given that there are already good, clear answers that are also helpful, I would err on the side of allowing it to remain.

The problem with automatically rewarding references is that you can't easily rank the quality of the references. A well reasoned answer with no references is better than a heavily referenced answer with poor references or inconsistent reasoning.

That said, the mods are always open to suggestions on how our moderating could be improved, and seeing as you've been active and adding value to the site, your opinion will be seriously considered. So feel free to make suggestions or point to areas where the moderating has been inconsistent, and we'll be more than happy to try improve it.