Tired of seeing an interesting question being posted that gets highly upvoted and every single response has been removed with the question never getting an answer. We could add something like what /r/WritingPrompts has where there is a single comment thread automatically made in a post devoted to comments that are on the topic at hand but does not meet the criteria for the fraction of responses that don't get deleted.
Tired of seeing an interesting question being posted that gets highly upvoted and every single response has been removed with the question never getting an answer.
The argument that "a bad answer is better than no answer" has never made sense to me.
This suggestion comes up from time to time, so it has been discussed in the past, but in the end rejected for several reasons. I'll copy what we wrote on this matter in this Rules Roundtable:
This is a recurring solution that gets suggested, an Automod post which would go up in every thread and says something like "If you don't have a complete answer, respond only to this thread". Several subreddits, most prominently /r/PhotoshopBattles, do something of this sort. While it does have some things to recommend it, we nevertheless are not particularly inclined to adopt such a solution, for several reasons.
Most importantly, allowing non-answer speculation or discussion to go on, even in a specific, limited space, would not be conducive to the environment that we seek to cultivate in /r/AskHistorians. The analogy might be imperfect, but it is similar to why, in your school lectures, the back row isn't designated as the "Sit here to crack jokes and chit-chat" row. We don't want to see people making clever one-liners in our subreddit, we don't want to see long strings of uninformed speculation. Simple as that. It isn't the space we are striving for. While providing a quarantined space for those might alleviate those concerns to a degree, in the best case scenario it would be a distraction in the thread, and also reduce the general tenor of discourse in the subreddit.
Regardless of what this space would look like, it has serious drawbacks. If the space is one where users can simply post their jokes and anything else barely related to the topic, any 'insightful discussion' that users might hope it would allow for will be drowned out in short order. If the space is moderated, but with a "lighter touch", then such an approach is asking the moderation team to add a considerable burden to our workload. Keep in mind that people already post jokes and non-contributive responses as it is, and they will certainly do so in considerably more volume if such a space is provided, no matter how clear its purpose is made, so it doesn't solve in any way the "seas of deleted comments" we are so famous for.