It seems like I’m seeing a proliferation of jokey answers early in GQ threads lately. I thought there was a sort of convention that we were supposed to at least wait a while before sharing our wit in this way. Has this rule been relaxed, or is it more a matter of it not being reported? Or am I just imagining things?
That’s what I thought, too—I could have sworn I’ve seen mods say something to that effect somewhere—but I don’t see anything about jokey answers in the GQ Rules and FAQs.
Awesome… it only says we should hold off on serious answers if we’re guessing, rather than giving an answer we have a cite for, and even then, we can jump in with WAG’s if the thread is about to drop off the first page. So, if we’re obviously joking, or if nobody’s given a citable answer, the sky’s the limit!
I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.
As the FAQ says, we prefer that you do.
Like the rule on posting threads in the right forum, this is more of a matter of etiquette than anything else. I rarely issue a mod note for it. It is likely to get moderator attention mostly if someone is particularly persistent or obtuse about doing it.
If you think they’re more frequent now than they ever were, then I would say yes.
It’s under #2:
Once, sometime ago, I thought there were a lot of less than ideal answers in GQ so I checked a hundred for first response a couple of times. Among first responders only about 10% were jokes, bugger off and Google it, that sort of thing on weekend afternoons. Weekday first responders were only about 6% bad.
I’m amazed you have the time to do the research. 
On a more serious note—We get spells where this is a problem, then it slacks off and we’re back to normal.
We always appreciate it when a poster reports joke early answers.
If a question could be answered by a really simple google search, it invites joke answers.
And if you need a* really quick, serious answer,* a message board may not be the best place to go. Call your attorney, your doctor, your psychiatrist, your congressman, or your geologist.
Great. Colibri says he rarely even gives a note for it, and Samclem goes all jackboots and issues a warning to** Loach**.
Horrible call. Worth a note at most, and certainly not a warning. Really wish the mods could show some level of consistency.
It was against the rules. Loach has been around for a long time and should know better. As should you.
Blah blah blah. Circle the wagons rather than admit glaring inconsistency. About what I expected. And, by the way, I know the rules better than you do.
It was incomplete, but still accurate as a partial answer to the question.
Of course you do.
sam happens to moderate joke answers in GQ more than I do. I happen to moderate political jabs more than sam does.
It’s rather bizarre to expect complete consistency between moderators here when it is not expected with respect to real life situations. Everyone is aware that particular judges, cops, or umpires may have differences in the interpretation and enforcement of rules. The same goes here.
You really expect to get a really quick, serious answer out of a Congressman?:eek:
And you know, even those which can be answered by a “really simple Google search” often will have a contradictory or just plain wrong answer on the first page.
I say, I say, was a joke, Son.
Pay attention now, boy!
that would be a senator.
From a Southern state, apparently.
Either that or he was just being… chicken?
If I had made a political joke I would have been put to death. But as I said in the thread it wasn’t a joke, it was a literary allusion. Any rule against that?
Personally, I think the issue is dead and buried and the horse is adequately beaten, however…
The problem with literary allusion is that many of them are quite obscure. There are certainly qualifications for being a moderator here, but being able to recognize every single pop-culture or classical reference isn’t one of them. If I might be so bold as to speak for the entire moderation staff for a moment, we haven’t seen every movie, read every book, watched every TV show, and listened to every band in existence. We don’t know all of the lyrics, we haven’t memorized all of the librettos, and we really can’t figure out what the heck In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was actually about.
I would dearly love to see all such literary allusions begin with “in the immortal words of Brian Wilson” or “to paraphrase the great sage Samuel L. Jackson.” That way, everybody either gets the joke, or at least realizes there is one.
And it was a factual answer, too!