Update Policy for Low-Quality Answers: Citations Required

Question

Abstract: "Back It Up" Policy for Answers

In this post, I propose updating the policy on Economics.SE for deletion of low-quality answers. While there has been some recent discussion regarding our site’s policy regarding deletion of low-quality answers, this question has come up on this site multiple times (reference provided below). A recent post has demonstrated that there is significant community support to develop more detailed guidelines for deletion of posts. Here, I review the policies adopted by other Stack Exchange sites and the rationale behind these policies and review criteria for how these policies might be successfully adopted on this site. In the end, I propose a stricter set of guidelines specifically for the deletion of answers. Specifically, I propose that we adopt the “back it up” principle adopted by over a dozen other stack exchange sites: a non-mathematical answer (or similar) must be backed up by citations or is subject to deletion. Here is an example. This policy reduces the amount of subjective judgement needed to determine whether a post needs to be deleted while also significantly increases the quality of posts on the site.

• The question portion of this post reviews the policies of other sites and discusses the rationale for them. Upvote this question if you support a revision of our policy.
• The answer portion of this post will contain specific policies that we might adopt. I post a specific policy based on an assessment of other sites’ policies. Upvote my answer if you support the specific policy that I propose. Also, feel free to submit alternative proposals.

Reviewing Answer-Deletion Policies Across Sites

On this site, we have discussed the problems associated with low-quality answers several times. I list these here.

• Bad in my opinion vs. low quality
• Post Removal and Rules Reminder
• What to do about heterodox answers in low-frequency questions?
• Preemptive protection
• Wikipedia Referencing and Content Rules - Is this time for me?

A common thread among these posts is the tension arising from the inherent subjectivity of determining whether an answer is of low quality. Fortunately, this problem has been already been solved (or at least mitigated) on many other Stack Exchange sites through the adoption of the so-called “back it up” principle. For most sites, this means that an answer must be backed up with a citation of some sort. On our site, it might mean something slightly different. For example, an answer to a question of a mathematical nature must be backed up with mathematical argumentation (obviously). A question of a more “wordy” nature must be backed up with a reference or citation to, say, a peer-reviewed journal. As argued on another site,

“For anyone who is trying to do actual research, answers without sources are useless. I'm not even going to talk about how answers without sources are often inaccurate, but I've noticed that people who know where they got their information from usually don't misremember things or post incorrect facts.”

The rationale, summarized in an oft-cited blog post by Robert Carataino is that “opinion, by itself, is noise.” If an answer is not backed up, it should be subject to deletion. See here for a list of sites that have adopted a policy of this nature: How widespread is the "back it up" principle?

Criteria for a Successful “Back It Up” Policy on Economics.SE

The idea of “back it up” is universal. However, since each site on Stack Exchange is different, the particulars of implementing such a policy are subtly different. Here I review some criteria that such a policy should have to be as successful as possible.

1. Because Economics.SE contains mathematical and computational questions, as well as discourse-based “wordy” questions, simply requiring all answers to contain citations is not a sufficient policy. However, the principle of “back it up” should be universal---since mathematical answers, say, can be backed up by mathematical argumentation. A successful policy on our site needs to articulate this.
2. The policy should be effective! That is, it should reduce the visibility of unsourced answers and other answers of low-quality. One way to do this is to simply encourage users to downvote such answers. Given that this site attracts a lot of laypeople who are very willing to upvote unsourced answers, I believe that the policy should be to delete such answers.
3. Such a policy should put as little burden on moderators as possible. Deletion of answers can only be done by moderators, with the exception of answers with a negative score. Given this, the community should be vigilant to downvote answers that do not satisfy this policy. (A downvote can be undone if the author fixes the answer via edits.) When such answers do not get the necessary downvotes, enforcement of the policy rests with the moderators. Thus, the policy should be such that a moderator can decide whether or not an answer should be deleted almost instantly and without effort. To accomplish this, there should be a simple, nearly programmatic rule for this. An example that might arise, for example, is that a moderator wants to allow for some sort of grace period for the author to revise the answer. In this case, a programmatic rule would be that an unsource answer MUST be deleted if it is older than 3 days, for example. By tying the hands of the moderator in this way, we in fact make their job easier.
4. How should this policy be applied to very old answers? There are a lot of old, unsourced answers on this site. A successful policy must describe how to deal with these. My take is that they will either be fixed by the community slowly over time or that they will be eventually deleted. For example, over time community members edit them or will flag them to bring them to the attention of moderators and they will slowly be resolved. If we’ve tied the hands of the moderators, as described above, the solution will be simple. Remember, “opinion, by itself, is noise.”
5. The policy should be short and simple. Short and simple policies are the most effective.

Answer 1

Here is my proposed FAQ on answers, the text is based on mashup of ideas in and under the two other answers of HerK and Jmbejara, as well as putting them into appropriate FAQ format (i.e. this FAQ has to be new user friendly), please feel free to comment on the FAQ or provide further answers that could be incorporated in. Once we agree on precise wording and policy we will create separate community wiki and update notices and other relevant materials with links to it.

---

FAQ on Answers:

I am a new user here on Economics.SE. What do I need to know about writing an answer here?

Welcome to Economics: Stack Exchange. Economics:SE is a question and answer site for those who study, teach, research and apply economics and econometrics. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about economics.

Economics:SE is Different

Economics:SE different to many online Q&A sites and forums (such as mailing lists, bulletin boards, and the commenting systems on blogs.) It is also fairly different to many other non-science web sites in the Stack Exchange family, such as Stack Overflow, that you may be familiar with. As a result, the Economics.SE community can appear to be a little demanding on new users. Many — perhaps even most — first time users are surprised when their contributions are judged against an unexpectedly high set of standards. We urge you not to be disheartened by this. Have a look around, and you will quickly understand how we work. We hope that you will soon appreciate the value that these standards bring in ensuring that the answers on Economics:SE are of very high quality and reliability.

These standards can be summarized as simply as: "Back it up!" This means that answers on this site have to be supported either by references to reputable and/or scholarly sources or by formal (mathematical) model or by sharing empirical results backed up by replicable example of code and data.

1. Answers That Need References

The biggest surprise to new users may be our insistence on references in the answers. Many forums will appear to simply accept at face-value the word of a random internet denizen. Here, we expect to be able to independently check what you are saying, as we want to chase down the evidence, rather than relying on authority or personal expertise. You should expect that people will actually verify whether your references say what you claim they say. Ideally, we would like to see links to peer-reviewed evidence. This makes writing an answer harder, but the good answers are appreciated much more.

To be more specific, answer that:

• contains a claim of an empirical or theoretical nature that concerns primarily with inferred information (i.e. information obtained as a result of some empirical or theoretical analyses), the sources cited must also be reputable and scholarly source;

• addresses a data inquiry or data request, it must provide links or references to the data or to a data codebook or data guide;

• claims about factual information (e.g. "Event X happened" or "So-and-so said this") be supported by reputable (or reputable and scholarly) sources.

What is reputable and scholarly source?

A source is reputable if its publisher or author(s) have the reputation within the economics profession for maintaining high standards of fact-checking, accountability, ethical reporting or production of high quality scholarly or professional work related to economics.

A source is scholarly if its publication requires a peer-review process.

Reputable and scholarly sources are:

a) peer reviewed articles published in reputable journals (i.e. predatory journals are not allowed, if in doubt refer to Scimago Journal & Country Rank of journals in economics or other fields).

b) peer reviewed handbooks or books that could be cited in reputable journals (but not undergraduate textbooks, save for circumstances mentioned under "Are There Any Exemptions?").

c) curated working paper series (e.g. NBER or MPRA that undergo limited peer review but not SSRN which does not - with exception of SSRN articles from authors affiliated reputable high ranking university; please refer to top 200 universities in QS Economics & Econometrics ranking).

d) technical reports produced by widely recognized government or supranational organization which specialize or heavily participate economics research (e.g. IMF, World Bank, ECB, BoE, Fed, OECD etc.).

What is only reputable source?

a) News articles (but NOT opinion pieces) in a respectable news outlet such as Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg, etc.

Does that mean that popular books or blogs from economists are not allowed on this site?

No, but these do not count as a support for an independent claim. You should feel free to quote or use material from these and reference them but they should not be the only sources used to back up a claim. For example, if you think that certain blog provides excellent intuition behind a certain result you can use reputable and scholarly sources as a support for the result itself and blog as a source for intuitive explanation.

2. Answers That are Supported by Theoretical Model

These are answers supported by mathematical argumentation and derivation from certain premises. You should still provide reference for the validity of premises unless they fall under exceptions listed under "Are There Any Exemptions?" or if question requests you to use certain premises (please note that graphical analysis, done rigorously, is also form of mathematical analysis e.g. supply-demand charts etc).

3. Answers That are Supported by Empirical Model/Estimation

These answers should be explicit about functional form of their model and provide access to replicable code and data. Note code and data can be provided via link to external sites (such as GitHub) or link to external dataset (unless user combined several dataset or manipulated data in a way not reflected in the code).

Are There Any Exemptions?

Yes there are few exceptions from the rules above:

• Common knowledge. What is common knowledge? Common knowledge is a knowledge that everyone or virtually everyone knows. Examples of common knowledge include: "Canada is country in North America", "USD is currency of USA", "1 is an odd number". Remember: whenever in doubt whether your statement is common knowledge, please follow the rules listed in previous sections!

• Common knowledge in economics. What is common knowledge in economics? It is a knowledge that anyone who ever studied economics 101 should know. It is general knowledge you would find in introductory economics texts such as Samuelson: Economics, Mankiw Principles of Economics, Krugman: Economics for AP and so on... (e.g. statements like 'profit maximizing monopoly will produce quantity at a point where marginal revenue equals marginal cost'). Remember: whenever in doubt whether your statement or claim is common knowledge in economics, please follow the rules listed in previous sections! (Note: you can provide citations to introductory economics texts as a proof of claim being common knowledge, if challenged).

• Common knowledge in mathematics, statistics & econometrics. What is common knowledge in in mathematics, statistics & econometrics? It is a knowledge that anyone who ever studied in mathematics, statistics & econometrics 101 should know. It is general knowledge you would find in introductory texts such as Sydsaeter et al: Essential Mathematics for Economic Analysis or Newbold et al: Statistics for Economics and Business or Stock and Watson Introduction to Econometrics etc... Remember: whenever in doubt whether your statement or claim is common knowledge in mathematics, statistics & econometrics, please follow the rules listed in previous sections! (Note: you can provide citations to introductory texts as a proof of claim being common knowledge, if challenged).

• When you are writing an answer for question with soft-question tag references are encouraged but not required. Note: soft-question tag should not be abused and only used for informal questions about workings or practices within economics profession. Repeated abuses of soft-question tag after warning might result in moderator intervention.

• When you are writing an answer for question with reference-request tag and original poster specifies that they are looking for a reference to literature not mentioned in the previous section.

What Happens if I do not Follow These Rules?

Your contributions can get flagged and receive moderator post notice

Answers that are at least 3 days old and are still not backed up will be deleted.

What Should I do if I See an Answer That does not Follow These Rules?

Please consider either:

1. Edit the answer and add missing sources if you know sources that would support the answer.

2. flag the answer using:

• low quality flag

or

• needs moderator intervention flag and write in "needs support/references/sources" or an equivalent of that (feel free to specify which paragraphs lack sources).

I Flagged Old Question for Lack of Sources and the Flag was Declined, What is Going on?

We implemented this policy on insert date. Previously, we only encouraged the 'back it up!' principle but did not enforced it.

As a result this site might have some old but great answers that do not fully comply with these rules. While we would ideally want to bring these old answers to our current standards, some of the past users might no longer be active and it would not be fair to delete their great contributions.

Consequently, moderators reserve right to apply the 'back it up!' policy on case by case basis for any answer posted before insert date (unless the post already received post notice in the past).

However, you should still feel free to edit these old answers and add sources that support the answer.

Conclusion

If you never visited Economics:SE these rules might seem a little bit demanding for an internet site. However, if you stay with us for a bit you will see that we take economics seriously and provide great answers and thoughtful answers. If you will stay with us longer, you will soon start to be disappointed that other forums don't demand the same standards.

---

Some remarks

• the FAQ above tries to be a compromise as such I think everyone will dislike some part of it but please let's not let perfect be the enemy of what can be done.

• the FAQ above copies the scholarly and reputable definitions from HerrK but not authoritative. This is because I can foresee that there will be borderline cases where someone's favorite economist is not well known or heterodox economist and there will be arguments about that. Unless we would wanna go the same way as Physics.SE and only allow mainstream science this might be bad idea and it might lead to fights and too much work for mod team to adjudicate who is authoritative and who is not.

• it does not allow entry level textbooks (save as proof of common knowledge when challenged), this makes it bit more strict and in line with original jmbejara proposal even if it does not go as far).

• it also allows for bit of ambiguity (one of the michaels points)

• it changes wording to at least 3 days, I will strive and also encourage other mods to do it after 3 days but were are volunteers there might be days (summer vacation times) where our vacations might overlap or we might accidentally miss an answer in periods of high activity so I prefer having there at least 3 days to avoid complaints that someone's post got bit more time before deletion.

• it allows for case by case dealing with old answers (I think this is only fair to past answers - especially for users that are not active right now but might want to come back to Economics.SE in the future).

EDIT:

I added provision for allowing use of graphs to support theoretical answer. In addition, I removed the right of moderators to delete very bad answers sooner than 3 days.

PS: This post is in essence just mash up of Herr K and jmbejara answers, thus credit should be yours guys. If this does matter to both or one of you, you can both post parts of this answer into community wiki which will record the contribution as being from you (community wikies allow for multiple contributors). Of course, this will be extended to any other users whose ideas might shape this FAQ.

Answer 2

Definitions

The following definitions of terms are adapted from here:

A source is reputable if its publisher or author(s) have the reputation within the economics profession for maintaining high standards of fact-checking, accountability, ethical reporting or production of high quality scholarly or professional work related to economics.

A source is authoritative if its publisher or author(s) have established expertise in the relevant subject area(s) as evidenced by their past scholarly publications or comparable professional accomplishments in the said area(s).

A source is scholarly if its publication requires a peer-review process.

The idea for introducing these three definitions is to require

• claims about factual information (e.g. "Event X happened" or "So-and-so said this") be supported by reputable sources, and
• claims about inferred information, i.e. information obtained as a result of some empirical or theoretical analyses (e.g. "Most of X has property Y" or "X causes Y") be supported by either reputable-and-authoritative or reputable-and-scholarly sources.

The reason for accepting "reputable-and-authoritative" sources is that opinions of a well-established expert, on a topic of their expertise, deserve serious consideration by virtue of them being authoritative--a usually hard-earned status, even if we may end up disagreeing with them. Moreover, if one day Al Roth comes here and answers questions on market design, his answers would carry weight even if they are not properly sourced. The reputability requirement is there to rule out self-proclaimed "experts" in some niche areas. Likewise, scholarly sources should generally be acceptable, and I throw in a reputability requirement there to rule out articles from dodgy journals.

The definitions purposefully leave room for accepting good quality professional sources. If we are serious about including them as part of our core user base, non-academic professional economists, e.g. PhDs working in the "industry" --- banks, consultancies, think tanks, governments, international organizations, etc. --- may have a slightly different set of trusted sources than what academic economists deemed acceptable. While such trusted professional sources would typically not be scholarly, they should still pass some form of reputability and authoritativeness criteria --- or so I would think. Input from member professional economists on this point would be especially welcomed.

Examples satisfying the above definitions

For completeness, I provide examples for all possible combinations of the three criteria. I don't expect full consensus on my placement of the examples, but a lot of the potential disagreements won't matter for the purpose of formulating our policy, which only requires the distinction between being reputable, reputable-and-authoritative, and reputable-and-scholarly.

Reputable but not necessarily authoritative or scholarly:

• News articles (but NOT opinion pieces) in a respectable news outlet such as Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg, etc.

Authoritative but not necessarily reputable or scholarly:

• A working paper on a niche topic by an otherwise "well-established" economist (e.g. Bart Lipman's 12-year-old working paper)

Scholarly but not necessarily reputable or authoritative:

• An article by a little known author in a very lowly ranked journal

Reputable and authoritative but not scholarly:

• A "popular science" book by a well-known and well-established economist (e.g. Al Roth's book)

Reputable and scholarly but not authoritative:

• The first publication by a young economist in a decent journal

Authoritative and scholarly but not reputable:

• An article on a niche topic in a non-economics journal by an otherwise well-established economist (e.g. Arthur Robson's secret handshake paper)

Reputable, authoritative, and scholarly:

• Many articles in decent journals
• Many books by well-known academic publishers

---

Policy Statement

Given the above definitions and in light of @jmbejara's answer and the comments under it, I propose the following revised version of the "Back it up" Policy:

Effective on <date>, each answer on Economics.SE must be appropriately backed up; otherwise it is subject to deletion. "Backing up" an answer means providing suitable support for the claims made therein. Specifically, if an answer:

1. contains a claim of a mathematical or theoretical nature, that claim must be supported by mathematical arguments or reference to reputable-and-authoritative or reputable-and-scholarly sources;
2. contains a claim of an empirical nature, that claim must be supported by referring to reputable sources; in addition, if the claim concerns primarily with inferred information, the sources cited must also be either authoritative or scholarly;
3. contains a claim of a computational nature, that claim must be supported by code or references to such;
4. addresses a data or reference request, it must provide links or references to scholarly or authoritative sources, unless explicitly requested otherwise by the asker.

Answers that are 3 days old and are still not backed up WILL BE DELETED. Community members should flag posts that don’t meet these standards as “low-quality answers” to bring them to the attention of moderators.

I should note that this version is itself subject to revisions and improvement.

---

Remarks

• The inclusion of an "effective date" give us some leeway in dealing with "old violations".
• The policy require claims to be supported, so an answer with multiple claims would call for separate support for each of them.
• Newspapers are allowed for facts only.
• On inferred information, the following "reasonable" examples would clear the bar:
  • most common journal articles
  • most working papers by professors tenured at major universities
  • NBER WP series
  • academic books and handbooks published by major academic publishers
  • papers presented at major conferences/workshops/seminar series
  • most graduate textbooks
• Cases that require judgment/discussion:
  • widely adopted undergraduate textbooks (e.g. Mankiw)
  • reports by (trusted) government, industry or international bodies (e.g. IBIS World Industry Reports, publications by the IMF/World Bank/OECD)
  • trade journals
  • <...>

Answer 3

The “Back It Up” Principle on Economics.SE

Policy Specifics

Policy Statement: Each answer of Economics.SE must be backed up in some way, or it is subject to deletion. Answers that are 3 days old and are still not backed up WILL BE DELETED. “Backing up” an answer depends on the type of question. Questions of a mathematical or computational nature must be backed up by mathematical argumentation or code. Questions about data or data sources must be backed up by links or references to the data or to a data codebook or data guide. All other types of questions must be backed up by references to credible academic sources. Examples of such sources include articles from a peer-reviewed journal or high-quality working paper series (e.g. NBER); peer-reviewed handbook chapters; or advanced-level, scholarly textbooks. References to newspapers or similar publications do not count. If an answer makes several significantly independent claims, each must be supported by references. Community members should flag posts that don’t meet these standards as “low-quality answers” to bring them to the attention of moderators.

Discussion of why the policy was formulated in this way

• As discussed in the question, requiring deletion after the unsourced question is 3 days old makes the job of the moderator easier. If their hands are tied, they don’t have to worry about offering grace periods or offending. Community members should be able to alert an author of the deletion policy and 3 days should be enough time to revise. Also, authors will still be able to see their deleted posts, so they can always repost later if they are able to find a citation later.
• I have chosen 3 days specifically because it is a rather short time period. If the time period is longer, then the answer will likely get lost down deep in the feed. It is easiest to delete while the answer is fresh, so that moderators don’t have to remind themselves to come back to it later.
• Theoretically, the community will bring such posts to the attention of moderators. This means that a moderator can easily go through their queue of flags and quickly delete answers that don’t meet our standards.
• Note that moderators may always choose to delete an answer that doesn’t meet these standards sooner than 3 days, subject to their judgement. This policy only requires the answer to be deleted after 3 days. However, this policy does not limit their ability to use their best judgement where appropriate.
• For non-mathematical questions (and the like), this policy requires citations to credible academic sources. Newspapers and other such references do not count for the following reason, because such references are likely useless for the target audience of this site. This site is supposed to be a site for experts or those doing economics professionally. See this recent post. For a student, even a first-year graduate student and an advanced undergraduate, writing a research paper using references to newspaper articles is generally unacceptable. For graduate students, academics, and professionals, only peer-reviewed journals or high-quality working papers are useful. This also has the benefit of avoided discussions of bias among different news outlets. Technically, the one exception embedded in the policy is if the newspaper article is used as a citation for data. That is, the newspaper article contains a graph or figure that is used to back up the answer given.
• Note that neither books nor Wikipedia should not generally count as peer-reviewed sources (unless the book is a reputable, scholarly textbook). Also note that high quality textbooks will include references to peer-reviewed articles. If you're using a textbook, this will make it easy to find the relevant peer-reviewed article to cite and it is encouraged that you provide the references to the underlying articles rather than the textbook itself.
• The policy does not specify what happens to very old unsourced posts. My intention is that these will slowly resolve themselves over time. Either community members will slowly edit them over time or they will eventually be flagged by the community and will be deleted.
• This policy complements a related policy for questions developed in another meta post regarding "expert-level questions".
• The policy description that I have provided above is relatively short. It is one short paragraph that can be included in the help section of the site. It covers most of the cases that this site will encounter. Answers that don’t fit any of the cases will be left to the discretion of the community and the moderators. The underlying principle is the same, though. All answers must be “backed up.”

Answer 4

I present here a number of features which I believe a policy on low-quality answers should have (it is not a fully worked-out policy).

1. The policy should have regard to the needs of all the groups in our strapline “For those who study, teach, research and apply economics and econometrics”.

The site does not currently attract enough experts and some degree of change to make it more useful to experts seems sensible. But change should not be at the price of making the site significantly less useful to others, or significantly devaluing their past efforts. Compromise between the needs of different groups is required. Those who would like a radically different kind of site tailored primarily to the needs of experts do have the option of setting up a new site, either within Stack Exchange or elsewhere.

2. The policy should include explicit guidance on the boundary between what should fall within the scope of the “back it up” principle and what can reasonably be taken to be common knowledge so does not need to be backed up.

This has been well addressed in the answer by 1muflon1. I would just add that what is common knowledge can be interpreted in two ways. One is what is common to all or most of the site community. Another is what is common to the sub-community of those likely to be interested in a particular question. Favouring the latter interpretation, I suggest that, for an expert question, the scope of what can be taken to be common knowledge is wide (but the quality of back-up for what isn’t common knowledge should be high). For a beginner question, conversely, the scope of common knowledge is narrower (but the quality of back-up for what isn’t need not be so high).

3. Where back-up is required, the type(s) of back-up that is/are appropriate will depend on the question and on the content of the answer.

The following quote is from this post by Monica Cellio on Meta SE:

Backing up an answer includes citing sources, making a logical argument, and sharing relevant personal experience.

With the caveat that personal experience will rarely be relevant on Economics SE, this is I suggest a good summary of the variety of forms which back-up may take. But not all forms of back-up are appropriate in all circumstances. A few examples:

a) Empirical claims (unless common knowledge) require citing sources. They could require logical argument as well (eg to draw a conclusion where a cited source just provides data).

b) Theoretical claims (unless common knowledge) require logical argument, but that could be by presenting an argument, or by citing a source containing an argument (though in the latter case it would be good practice to give a brief summary rather than a bare citation).

c) Textbooks and online teaching sites can usefully be cited in answers to elementary questions (and may well be more useful to questioners than peer-reviewed papers which for many can be difficult to access or understand). They will rarely be appropriate in answering expert questions (not so much because of doubts about reliability but because their contents, to experts, will probably be common knowledge).

d) Newspapers and online news sites will rarely be appropriate sources for citation (because they tend to misinterpret or sensationalize scientific findings), but could be useful in answering questions on specific events too recent to have been considered in other sources.

e) Occasionally, questions specifically ask for a particular type of back up. Such requests should be respected.

4. Where back-up is by logical argument, the policy should not privilege mathematics over other recognised forms of reasoning, eg verbal or diagram-based.

This is not in the least to criticise the use of mathematical reasoning in economics. I am merely asserting that each of these forms of reasoning can be used well or used not so well, and that different forms of reasoning may be appropriate to different questions or to different questioners (ie where their level of knowledge and understanding can be inferred from the wording of the question).

Answers which merely use verbal reasoning to draw conclusions from common knowledge assumptions (and therefore contain neither citations nor mathematical formulae) should be judged on their merits and not automatically assessed as low-quality. By judging on their merits, I mean assessing whether the assumptions really are common knowledge and whether there has been a reasonable attempt to present a logical argument rather than just make assertions.

5. Compliance with the policy should be encouraged and enforced primarily by the community, rather than by use of moderator powers.

I understand the attraction of using moderator powers to deal with a case such as recently arose in which a low-quality answer to this question received a large number of votes giving it more prominence than several other very good answers. Such an answer does not give a good impression of the site, and for a case such as that, I think deletion using moderator powers is appropriate (see 6 below).

However, the maxim “hard cases make bad law” is relevant here. Although low-quality answers are quite common, most of them do not gain such prominence. For many such answers, the voting system works well in ensuring that they are listed below better answers. I have two suggestions to try to make it work better still. One is to positively encourage downvoting of low-quality answers. I don’t share the view occasionally expressed that it is rude to downvote without giving the reason in a comment. Giving a reason would be helpful to a new user, but I don’t think it should be considered essential if a regular participant posts an answer that is clearly in breach of published policy. Those of us with a decent amount of rep shouldn’t be concerned by the small loss of rep (-1) that downvoting an answer entails.

My second suggestion starts from the likelihood that, when low-quality answers receive a lot of votes, some of those votes are by people who are not regular users of Economics SE but have seen a question on Hot Network Questions. We might explore (I think it would have to be raised with Stack Exchange management) the possibility of excluding our site from HNQs. This has already been done for several other sites (see here). The grounds for requesting exclusion would be that some economic questions are liable to attract attention from those with more interest in some social, political or other agenda than in economic science and that their votes can be harmful to the site.

6. Deletion by use of moderator powers should be limited to answers which are a) clearly offensive, or b) amount to non-answers, or c) contain contentious empirical claims that are BOTH not adequately backed up AND of a kind liable to attract attention from those with more interest in a social, political or other agenda than with economic science.

Category (c) is deliberately quite narrow. The fact that a claim is a matter of academic dispute does not in itself qualify. For example, Richard Carson and Jerry Hausman have published opposing views on the reliability of contingent valuation as a method of valuing environmental assets (see here). A post taking one side or other in that dispute in itself would I think be unlikely to attract the wrong sort of attention. But if someone were also to make a claim about the value of a particular well-known environmental asset (New York’s Central Park, say) then it might be judged likely to do so, and deletion (in the absence of adequate back-up) would I think be appropriate.

It is I suggest fairly straightforward to identify topics that might be liable to attract the wrong sort of attention. An initial list might be any economic questions involving reference to race, gender, environment and climate change, and international disputes.

Category (b) is helpfully explained in Herr K's answer here.

7. Deletion of an answer, whether by use of moderator powers or by the community via the low quality review queue, should normally be based on careful judgment. Only in the most blatant cases should it be an instant decision.

I am not persuaded by the argument that a policy should be simple. A simple policy will almost inevitably have unfortunate results in some cases. It is true that if many answers are to be deleted by use of moderator powers, a simple policy will place less burden on moderators than a more complex one, and I recognise that the burden on moderators, who act voluntarily for no tangible reward, is an important consideration. My proposal in 6 above, limiting the scope of deletion by use of moderator powers, would address that.

8. Any application of a new policy to old answers should be preceded by a substantial grace period, allowing time for people to consider editing their answers to comply with the policy.

Many people have put a lot of effort into answers over the years, in many cases trying hard to comply with policies applying at the time and to tailor answers to the particular needs of questioners. Some would probably be inclined to react strongly if deletion of many of their answers were to result, either suddenly or progressively over time, in significant loss of rep.