# What constitutes a trivial answer?

I was startled just now to find what I considered a non-trivial (albeit very short) answer summarily (and almost before I posted it!) turned into a comment on the grounds that it was trivial. In fact it was a pointer to an answer to another question, directing the OP’s attention both to the answer itself and to the discussion in the ensuing comments; between them they largely answered her question. I could have copied the information into a new answer, and presumably that would have stood as a substantive answer. So I’m curious: why is it ‘trivial’ when it’s at the other end of a link that is accompanied by an indication of what to look for? Does that hold equally for an answer that contains little more than link to a proof available elsewhere on-line?

In retrospect I should probably simply have voted to close the question as a duplicate, as I’ve now done, but I’m still curious about the question in the title.

(Feel free to re-tag this; I’m still learning my way around the meta tags.)

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An answer consisting only of the word "Trivial." is a trivial answer. :-) –  Asaf Karagila Nov 4 '12 at 20:49
@Asaf: I don’t know: getting the system to accept an $8$-character answer is a non-trivial task! –  Brian M. Scott Nov 4 '12 at 20:51
${}{}{}{}{}{}$ :-) –  Asaf Karagila Nov 4 '12 at 20:53
@Brian Could you please give a link to the example you mention. –  Bill Dubuque Nov 4 '12 at 20:56
@Bill: It’s this question; I deleted the comment into which my answer was transmuted when I voted to close; it pointed to this answer and the ensuing discussion. (I left this information out of the question here because I really am more interested in the general question, now that it’s been brought to my attention.) –  Brian M. Scott Nov 4 '12 at 21:14
@Brian Ah, so your answer was converted to a comment automatically by heuristics in the SE software (vs. by a moderator)? If so, then it would help to emphasize that. The heuristics often make questionable decisions. Usually there is a way to workaround them. For example, providing good literature references often requires much expertise, and we shouldn't discourage such by automatically demoting them to comments. –  Bill Dubuque Nov 4 '12 at 21:23
@Bill: Never having seen that particular feature of the software in action, I didn’t realize that that’s what had happened; if you’ll post that explanation as an answer, I’ll accept it. (At least now I understand how it was able to be accomplished so quickly!) –  Brian M. Scott Nov 4 '12 at 21:24
@Brian I recall the first time it happened to me. It looked like my answer simply vanished when I posted it, since there was no message that it converted it to a comment (and the comments to the question were offscreen in my browser window, so I didn't see it get moved there). So I posted the answer again, and again, till I finally realized something was amiss. Not the best UI design here. Someone will probably give a link to an MSO thread on this "feature". –  Bill Dubuque Nov 4 '12 at 21:31
@Brian: That is the first time I see a deleted answer was honestly deleted, and there is no trace of it left... –  Asaf Karagila Nov 4 '12 at 21:43
@Asaf I suspect that's because the SE software never actually posts an answer if it deems it trivial. Rather, it transforms it to a comment during the posting process. –  Bill Dubuque Nov 5 '12 at 1:43
I removed the moderation tag, since it is done by some algorithm and without human intervention. –  Willie Wong Nov 5 '12 at 9:30
–  Phira Nov 6 '12 at 0:37
Cool, it worked. –  Phira Nov 6 '12 at 0:38