The Answer Policy queue ensures that Quora answers comply with site policies and provide helpful information.
The Answer Policy queue contains answers that have been reported by users. Decisions you make in the queue collapse or delete the answer, depending on the severity of the policy violation.
Answers will appear one at a time. You will see the question, answer, and the reasons it was reported:
Follow these steps to process the queue:
Consider the question for context, but focus primarily on the answer.
Sometimes, the queue will include notes made by users.
Notes are helpful in providing context to the report, but you must independently assess whether the answer violates a Quora policy.
Read the whole answer. If it's a long answer, you may skim through it, but keep an eye out for violations.
Make the decision based on the “originally answered” version of the question.
If the live answer is a valid one to the originally asked question, then don't flag the answer as “Bad Answer”. You can find the originally answered question in the queue itself.
If the live answer does not answer the originally asked question or violates any of our queue-specific policies, then select the appropriate label to flag the item
Decide whether the answer violates a policy in the list of labels.
If an answer violates multiple policies, choose the highest severity policy.
The labels in the queue appear in order of decreasing severity.
For example, if an answer contains both plagiarism and very bad formatting, it should be labeled as plagiarism.
Otherwise, label as OK if the answer does not contain any policy violations.
We recommend using keyboard shortcuts for this queue.
Reviewers are expected to check an answer for plagiarism if:
Text has been highlighted in the queue and there is a Quora-provided external link telling the reviewers where the text has been copied from, or
The answer has been reported for plagiarism
Take the following steps in chronological order to check for plagiarism in answer_policy queue when text in queue is highlighted:
STEP 1: Check to see if the highlighted text matches content in Quora-provided external link exactly:
If no, answer has not been plagiarised
If yes, move on to STEP 2
STEP 2: Compare the date answer was posted to the date the content in external site was posted
If Quora answer was posted before content in external site was posted, then answer has not been plagiarised
If there is no date of posting in external site, then (for our purposes) the answer has not been plagiarised
If Quora answer was posted after content in external site was posted, then move on to STEP 3
STEP 3: Compare Quora answer authorship to external content authorship
If authors are the same, label as OK if the answer:
Does not violate our spam policy
If authors are different, flag as Plagiarism if user did not provide any attribution and the copied text is not clearly formatted
If authorship is unclear (i.e., you cannot determine if the author of the answer and that of the external source are the same person), flag the answer as Plagiarism if the content has not been attributed correctly and copied text is not clearly formatted
This typically happens when users go by a different identity on another website (e.g., steempunk, darth_vader). We want our plagiarism guidelines to take into account the different ways in which people post the same content on the internet.
What do I do if there are no highlights but the answer has been reported for plagiarism?
Copy-paste a snippet of the answer into Google and look for any external sites from which the content has been copied. When you find one, follow steps 2 and 3.
What if I copy-paste a snippet into Google and find that there exists a Quora answer which is an exact match?
There is no problem if the answer has proper attribution. However, if it doesn’t have proper attribution then use the following rules to make a decision:
[Same authors, no attribution] Flag as Spam only if the answer is promotional according to our criteria and when both spam and plagiarism labels are in the queue
This means that the user is copy-pasting the same answer into different question pages in order to make money.
We no longer penalize users who have copy-pasted non-spam, non-promotional answers into multiple question pages. We think that these users may not be aware of our plagiarism guidelines and we want to give them the benefit of doubt.
These users don't even have to provide any attribution or special formatting to indicate that the text has been copied.
[Different authors, no attribution] Flag as plagiarism if the Quora answer you are reviewing was written after the Quora answer you found upon Googling.
[Unclear authorship, no attribution] Flag as plagiarism if the Quora answer you are reviewing was written after the Quora answer you found upon Googling.
This typically happens with one of both of the answers you are comparing have been written anonymously.
If an answer is not plagiarised, should I label it as OK?
You should still check if the answer violates any other policies for which there are labels in the queue and then label appropriately.
Is there a reason I should follow the steps you’ve outlined in the exact chronological order?
Yes! Following these steps in chronological order will help save time by eliminating answers until you find and label ones that are plagiarised. Sticking to this process also means that you don’t have to use precious mental bandwidth to hold all the complicated plagiarism rules in your head; you can now focus on correctly identifying plagiarised content on Quora. This will also help you achieve and maintain accuracy targets.
You should label an answer as “Very Bad Formatting” if it meets both the following criteria:
The answer is exclusively a poem in response to a question that does not ask for poems, and
The poem is not accompanied by an explanatory text
The text can be in the form of a single sentence, paragraph(s), etc., that explains why the OP chose to include a poem in the answer