Some answers have links in them relating to further resources, which I think is alright. However, there are some answers that have a link and little else, sometimes that is what is needed to solve OP's question.

The problem arises when someone in the future would like to click on the link but it does not exist. Link rot is a problem, would edits that add a small excerpt from the link to an answer with little or no extra information be valid?

When an answer depends on a link I think adding a small quote from that link should be necessary in order to preserve that information. I've done an edit like this in the past and had it approved another one I've done recently got rejected twice and approved once for the following reasons:




If the reviewers reasoning holds true, I won't do edits like this anymore.

Review link

As mentioned previously, some links are helpful. I am not asking when I should flag an answer but when to add an excerpt from the link to preserve the essence in case of link rot.

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The people who rejected your edit (which included the original author of the answer!!) were wrong. Plain and simple. I have no explanation that I can offer for their rejection. The author should have been thanking you.

Expanding a bare link into either a summary or excerpt is always a good edit, and such edits should always be approved.

The other good thing that your edit did was fix incorrect formatting. Code should be formatted as code (I know, surprising, right?).

I've gone ahead and rectified this little mishap by retroactively approving your edit. (I also fixed some of the grammar to make it read a bit more naturally, because I'm a perfectionist.)

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    This wasn't a link only answer. The answer was the code, and the link was for supplemental information. It's correct for that situation to just be the link, and now the answer is dominated by largely irrelevant information, specifically in violation of the OP's intentions. Retroactively approving this edit is clearly wrong. – Servy Aug 3 '17 at 13:23
  • Enjoying new tools? :) – xenteros Aug 3 '17 at 13:26
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    That's irrelevant, and then ridiculous. The central question when approving edits is, "Does this make the post better?" In this case, the answer was a clear yes. Granted, "link-only" is probably a bad choice of term, here, since that has kind of an established meaning. The point is that, as has been established ad nauseum, links rot and are not sufficient alone. You should include a summary or excerpt of the relevant information. – Cody Gray Aug 3 '17 at 13:31
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    @CodyGray And that edit makes the post worse. It was correctly rejected. You've made the post worse by approving it. You've filled the entire answer with information not actually relevant from the answer, distracting from the actual answer and likely confusing readers. It's not only not necessary to include an excerpt when linking to documentation for supplemental information, it's wrong to do so. If that information was actually the answer to the question, then sure, it should be in the answer, but it's not. – Servy Aug 3 '17 at 13:41
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    I'm with Servy on this one. The link was provided for additional reading only, and the excerpt that was inserted was not relevant to answering the question. Adding the excerpt did not improve the overall quality of the answer. – BJ Myers Aug 3 '17 at 20:38
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    Yay! Some sensibleness. The goal here is to have better content. Improving posts whenever they can be improved is the default way to do that. Deletion is for when without intervention of the author the post can't be improved into something acceptable. Same with closing. – Braiam Aug 3 '17 at 20:48
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    @Braiam The edit made the post worse, the post didn't merit deletion even without the edit. The answer was already acceptable before the edit. Apparently "not bothering to even read the answer before radically altering it in a harmful manner" is "sensibleness" these days... – Servy Aug 3 '17 at 20:56
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    @Servy: While I tend to agree, that the edit didn't improve the answer, the answer was low-quality to begin with. "Try this" followed by code is not ever a quality answer. A quality answer needs to explain, what the problem is, and how the proposed answer addresses it. It should also come with a rationale, so that you know when good advice turns bad. This answer is neither of those, and it's wasting precious resources, making this much of a fuss about it. – IInspectable Aug 3 '17 at 21:29
  • The link is barely better than a link to googles or wikipedias start page, the excerpt even worse. The answer could be improved for sure - that would be by altering the link to point to the specific part of the documentation that explains/solves the problem. This more specific link could have been backed up by some excerpt from the documentation, containing the explaination. Some excerpt talking about oranges when the question was apples... - I don't think there is more to say. – derM Aug 3 '17 at 21:33
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    @IInspectable Agreed. That's all the more reason not to edit the post. Don't polish turds. The edit not only makes the post marginally worse, but it's not a good answer, even after the edit. – Servy Aug 3 '17 at 21:39
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    "Expanding a bare link into either a summary or excerpt is always a good edit, and such edits should always be approved." - Only if the link applies. The link is to a page which does not specifically explain $state.go and which also refers to an older version of the software... – mkl Aug 3 '17 at 21:59
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    I'm having some difficulty following the arguments here. People seem to be claiming that the excerpt has nothing to do with the answer and therefore shouldn't be included, because it doesn't actually improve it. If that's the case, then the link was irrelevant and should have simply been removed. Stated differently: either the information from the link is relevant and including it in the answer makes the answer better, or the link is not relevant and shouldn't have been there. – Cody Gray Aug 4 '17 at 3:57
  • @CodyGray it may be better to avoid retroactive edits of review in general, and let community re-submit some edit-suggestions (or close/reopen votes) if a previous review wasn't handled the way we think it should have been handled, especially after an OP decision. – Cœur Aug 5 '17 at 11:10

The link was never the answer in the first place. The code was the answer. The link was merely supplemental, and there for further reading on the topic. It's improper to fill the entire answer with supplemental information that the question author intentionally choose not to include in the answer, and also specifically choose not to include in the answer even after you suggested it (given that they rejected the edit, clearly indicating that they felt that information didn't belong in the answer).

If you feel that the the answer that this person posted was too brief, and you feel that more information is necessary, then you can post your own answer including as much additional information as you feel is appropriate. That doesn't make it okay to fill someone else's answer with additional information that they felt isn't helpful in answering the question.

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    This is rubbish and duplication of content. The same solution on two answers makes it more difficult to maintain and fix in the long run. – Braiam Aug 3 '17 at 20:55
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    @Braiam What are you even talking about? I'm advocating against duplicating the content. You're the one that just duplicated the content again, doing the exact thing you're claiming is rubbish. – Servy Aug 3 '17 at 20:59

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