Short answer:
- Is it a good decision? What are your thoughts on this new feature?
I don't think the decision was made without considering other side or negative effects. But SE decided so and we have to follow it. The question is not whether it is good or bad. The real question is how English Language and Usage Stack Exchange (ELU) will cope with it.
What about the 7-day rule? Should this be changed?
No. It doesn't need to be changed as long as we take care of Very Low Quality (VLQ) answers within 7 days and we figure out how to deal with old VLQs. We need more active involvement of high-reputation users (including moderators) to take care of VLQ answers.
Long Answer:
That decision seems to affect all Stack Exchange sites. I don't think it affects ELU that much as long as ELU can establish its own way of dealing with low-quality answers.
I know ELU has three sets of opinions in terms of dealing with low-quality answers.
- Progressive Party:
Some might call it aggressive, but users including myself in this party think that all one-liners should be downvoted, flagged and ultimately deleted regardless of whether a post answers a question.
- Centrist (Moderate) Party:
They maintain middle ground. They don't voice their opinion on the issue.
- Conservative Party:
They think, as long as a post answers a question, one-liner should not be flagged and deleted. They know it is not encouraged, but it is wrong to persecute the OP just because (s)he didn't spend time to expand their answers with a dictionary link, proper reference or essential part of a link.
Let's take a look at the following question: A word for something that is both useful and beautiful
There's a total of 13 answers, two of which were deleted. Out of 13, seven answers are one liners as follows:
- The most upvoted answer: Could it be described as an elegant solution or an engineering marvel?
The above sentence reads more like a comment than an answer as it ends with a question mark. However, this answer has at least two links for "elegant" and "marvel", but it doesn't include essential part of the links, nor is it explaining why it could answer the question.
- I think neat could work as well. (It even has one upvote).
- The best answer that comes to my mind is the word nifty.
- Exquisite, polished or "exquisitely polished".
- Ergonomic could possibly be an answer, it is the appropriate word that can help improve your ability to work with the area around you.
- Amazing, exquisite, marvy, simple, outstanding, fine, neat, inventive
- (Deleted) I would like to use the word "Admirable"
Under the circumstances where we can't flag any of the above answers as "VLQ", the remaining questions are
- Can we flag such answers as "Not An Answer (NAA)"?
I think those one-liners should be flagged as NAA.
- Are we going to continue to allow users to post one-liners?
No. We should post a comment to encourage them to include a link with essential part and proper reference. If a poster doesn't respond, we should flag it as NAA and vote to delete them.
It's about time we had firm policy on one-liners no matter when they were posted asking ourselves this question, "What good do those answers do to ELU?"
I copy and paste one of @DanBron's comments:
Welcome to EL&U. Please note that Stack Exchange seeks to build a
library of definitive answers, those which not only supply a quick
response, but which provide full explanations behind the response,
including suitable examples and references. I strongly encourage you
to take the site tour and review the help center for a better
understanding of our standards and guidelines, and then edit this
answer to expand it.