When importing SE questions, should negatively rated answers be hidden?

Question

It is long standing established practice on PO to hide imported comments, that are of no value or merit or have no meaning for the PO community (such as references to SE specific policies for example), when importing SE threads.

What about negatively rated answers, that are of low quality, off-topic, or that do otherwise not meet the standard of PO? Should such negatively rated imported answers generally be hidden too, to not fill the site with sub-standard content?

Should it be the case, that the OP of such a negatively rated answer is active on PO too, he could still repost his answer if he feels like. This would also have the effect that the reposted answer would start out from a neutral unrated state.

What do you think?

Comments

Initially I had thought the same but there are not many of them. Keeping them with their negative score gives an idea about the level of quality expected. More problematic would be poor but positively rated posts, but there is is difficult to give clear rules. Thus I think nothing automatic should or need be done.

Answer 1

Perhaps we can discuss then in context rather than making a general rule.

But thumb rule wise, If the answer is particularly horrible(especially off topic), then it may be fine to remove it, unless a particular user requests that it stays, then it must pass through the usual process of community moderation.

We can always discuss specific answers on the import thread itself.

In general I think in the event of doubt or even hanging votes(30pc to 70pc type situations), the outcome must be in favour of keeping it rather than deleting it. It can later be subject to peer review.

Answer 2

The general policy regarding imports has been to not discriminate between native and imported posts. Meta-type comments are an exception, because SE policies are not relevant here, and we don't want to mislead new users.

I don't think this exception should be expanded to include stuff with content.

Comments

Minor comment: generally treating native and imported content the same is rather a (in my personal opinion good) established practice, than a (written down) policy (assuming no written down policies have changed without public discussion).