Introduction
Today I saw the Q&A How to compare power towers in Mathematica?. In the comments of the question, our users show that they are upset how math.SE handles what is essentially the same question.
Now it seems the bad answers there were downvoted and/or removed, a victory for the SE model!
I do not know which factors caused a good resolution of this problem. Whether that is the good discussion in the comments mentioned above, or the total bounty worth 850 points (500 if you do not count reinvested bounty). But offering 500 points to settle a discussion is not usually sensible.
Another Q&A
The whole ordeal in links above reminded me of this answer (by Andreas Lauschke, for reference). In my opinion, this is a bad answer, as the answer may mislead people to think the output of FindShortestTour
is wrong in this case, which I think is incorrect. I share Oleksandr's views in answer and I feel this explains why the output is correct. The tools to which the answer refers may be nice (or may not be), but it seems irrelevant to Q&A if FindShortestTour
behaves as expected. Nevertheless, the answer got 7 upvotes and a total "score" of +5.
I was considering asking a less general question on the meta, just to ask users to look at it and see what they think. Furthermore I considered flagging it for a moderator. I also considered suggesting an edit to see if that got enough support, but now that I have the privilege of editing myself, I did not want to bluntly edit it without consent. Another alternative might have been to discuss this in chat.
Note that Stefan also commented on the answer by Andreas Lauschke in his answer in italics, as can be seen from the revisions of his answer. It was suggested that such comments should be put on the meta site. I am glad that when Stefan posted his answer, Oleksandrs answer was not the top answer, but now it is.
Caution / tact
I guess I feel a bit awkward and uninformed about how things work here. An example that made me a bit nervous is this Q&A. I made a rash comment there and my answer needs some work. I hope I did/do not come across like soliciting for upvotes.
I want to be careful before "asking somebody to downvote something", or before using moderation tools. But I am very interested in this kind of thing and I want to be more able to contribute/participate in discussions and issues concerning voting. I hope this question will resolve the issue around Andreas Lauschke's answer as a side effect. In fact, if you agree with me I would have you upvote my last comment to his question (rather than downvoting the answer).
My more general questions
Should moderators ever delete/edit a question because of its technical (as opposed to textual/grammatical) contents, and if so should the cooperation/activity of the OP be a factor?
What steps should we take if we feel a particular disagreement on technical contents deserves a resolution?
P.S
I have many more questions about voting, but that may be something for other Q&As :)