Question: We're treading down a wrong path here, there needs to be some quality control in terms of answers. Just treating everything as "it's creative, don't hate" is such a bad way to regulate question and answer quality.

For example, this question: <https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/3911/a-man-pushes-his-car>

An answer like this: <https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/a/3925/4425> reads just like a Y! Answer. Completely random, made up. Sure it's a lateral thinking puzzle, but that's just a bad excuse for "anything goes in this question". 

Is this just me?

Answer: 
One reason for this is the way the 'hotness' scores are calculated.

Questions with high 'hotness' can reach the SE home page and the multi-collider-thingy, which gives them a big boost in visitors and rep.

The hotness formula gives a big advantage to questions with plenty of answers, specifically `MIN(AnswerCount, 10)`; see [How do the "arbitrary hotness points" work on the new Stack Exchange home page?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/60756/how-do-the-arbitrary-hotness-points-work-on-the-new-stack-exchange-home-page)

Puzzles which are more likely to get lots of answers are those which (IMO) are:

* easy
* open-ended.

Puzzles which are **less** likely to get lots of answers and therefore **less** likely to reach the supercollider are those which (IMO) are:

* hard (which is a good thing)
* clearly defined (which is a good thing).

The hotness formula also has a time element - it favours new posts over old ones - so the net effect is **to favour questions which get a lot of answers more quickly** than other questions. Which it seems to me is exactly what we don't want. A puzzle that lots of people contribute *different* answers to without taking any thinking time at all is perhaps not a puzzle with much depth to it.

~~It seems (if I understand the formula correctly) that questions which don't yet have any answers have a hotness score of 0. That's a real shame because the unsolved questions are some of our most interesting ones.~~ 

I had that wrong, was looking at an old version of the formula. The current formula is here: [What formula should be used to determine "hot" questions?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11602/what-formula-should-be-used-to-determine-hot-questions) "*This algorithm will heavily favor questions with LOTS of answers*"

Just an observation.

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I'd also like to point out that there's two different ways in which one can improve the average quality of content:

* One can criticise other people's contributions which one perceives as poor quality, in the hope that they will either stop contributing or improve the standard of their content,

or

* One can 'raise the batting average' by contributing high-quality content oneself.

thinly, I notice that (so far) you have contributed 0 answers and 0 questions to puzzling.SE.

I'm curious as to what it is about the poor quality you perceive in other people's contributions which prevents you from making any contribution at all?

Are you worried that your quality content will be overlooked, lost amid everyone else's content? Or that it won't be rewarded with the upvotes it deserves? If so then some adjustments to the site-specific hotness formula might help with that.
That is actually a good answer by StackExchange standards. The answerer provided a link to a reputable source (Wikipedia) as well as summarizing the condition in his own words. Then he explained how it answered the question.

There's some debate here as to whether we want to include well-known puzzles like these that are easily found on the web. That answer is a great reason for why we should. Most people may know (or can easily find) the classic answer, but that doesn't mean that new answers can't be discovered. Finding new answers to classic puzzles is a great way of adding value to the site and also growing and improving the art of puzzle solving.