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Out of curiosity I followed the first of Pierre's BioStars links from the comments on the FASTA lengths question, and noticed that our currently accepted answer bears a strong resemblance to this answer on BioStars.

I'm not trying to start anything, or accuse anyone here, but presumably we're not here to mirror answers already available elsewhere. So I'm just wondering whether there is a policy on this sort of thing, and whether anyone knows what the license for BioStars answers is?

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    $\begingroup$ Just to note, let's not make it OK to post "link only" answers. $\endgroup$
    – zx8754
    May 18 '17 at 6:25
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    $\begingroup$ Did this change? The currently accepted answer is yours, and the Biostars answer you link is a one-sentence reference to FastQC (and no reference to FastQC is made anywhere in answers here). $\endgroup$
    – Konrad Rudolph
    May 26 '17 at 11:28
  • $\begingroup$ It seems the answer I was referring to has been deleted $\endgroup$
    – Sam Nicholls
    May 27 '17 at 14:37
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    $\begingroup$ @SamStudio8 Ah, that’s a shame, because now there’s no single reference to FastQC. At any rate the BioStars answer was a single sentence so even if it were copied verbatim it would be unlikely to be (a) copyrightable or (b) ethically ownable. $\endgroup$
    – Konrad Rudolph
    May 30 '17 at 13:51
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    $\begingroup$ The question here was specifically about nanopore reads. FastQC is not appropriate for long reads, and likely to be harmful due to the false error flags that it will throw up. $\endgroup$
    – gringer Mod
    May 31 '17 at 9:33
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Regarding licensing for biostars posts, they're Creative Commons (version 4 if that matters). I'm personally of the opinion that biostars posts should at least be linked to so people can see where the information comes from and the original author there can get recognised. Others are, of course, free to disagree with that, but regardless I fully support your stance that there should be some sort of rough policy.

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    $\begingroup$ I would hesitate to use biostar as a source of information. There are low quality and sometimes completely wrong accepted answers. I would prefer to link the manual of a tool or a paper instead of biostar. $\endgroup$
    – Kamil S Jaron Mod
    May 24 '17 at 9:59
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    $\begingroup$ I don't think anyone is suggesting blindly believing things written on biostars (or anywhere else for that matter). When one uses any source it's one's own onus to ensure its reliability. $\endgroup$
    – Devon Ryan Mod
    May 24 '17 at 10:05
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    $\begingroup$ Sure, that sounds more than reasonable... $\endgroup$
    – Kamil S Jaron Mod
    May 24 '17 at 11:56

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