Don't answer a question with completely off topic advice

It really irritates people, AND ruins their experience. Imagine, asking "what's the tallest mountain in the world" and then getting a response "man, I love skiing".

Is that helpful? Nope. And if we see it, I'll probably delete it, and then, if I'm really cranky, I might disable or delete your account

Should we start doing more to discourage off topic & useless replies to questions?

I think sometimes the person reads the question wrong, and should just get a FunMail sent to them first to confirm. The other day someone said "How does heat get spread through heaters" but I thought it said "How does heat get spread through haters" so, my answer was way off topic and I felt really stupid.

I agree though, I see a lot of unhelpful advice and usually you can tell if someone did it on purpose or not. I find people get off subject because they start replying to other peoples advice on the question and eventually the posts have nothing to do with the original message.

Replying to a reply is fine...but, if you're first up & reply to a question about taxes, "how do I get a job when I'm 15?" then it's going to really upset the person who asked

Especially if they are new to the site, it may result in them never coming back which hurts the community as a whole.

WOW! I love to ski too! haha... just joking. I was under the impression that was what the "did you find this answer helpful?" button was for. Unfortunately, some misguided people think the button asks if he or she agrees with the post. Irritating, yes, but I agree with stephanief987. If I were to misread something and I was booted as a result, I probably wouldn't be back. Maybe you could change up the wording of the "did you find this helpful"question to an idiot proof question like "does this response relate to the actual question". And add another question asking if people agree with the response.

So you mean if we give untopic answer
you will delete our account??

Yep I agree that there are some people who do leave of the topic answers but most of those people seem to be ones who are only on here for a quick laugh and to get a kick out of it. So delete away wether your grumpy or not.
Have to say though most of the questions that get stupid answers are the stupid questions to start of with!

ahah sometimes like things people say dont relate well, but dont do that to their accounts. lol and yeah meganhead thats what I thought it was for too. lol I just became a member of this site thing. and I had been on it like 400 times before signing up but I kept coming back to see if anyone asked my question, which mostly happened, and I came back and signed up because some of the things people say is funny and makes me whanna read more. lolol

Your a really mean advisor! There arent that many off topic advisors, but why would you ice someone's account? I dont even understand deleting the comment if the persons whos advice is being answered was fine with it...

there are times when serious answers go off topic. I believe it is not intentional but merely when the mind moves in several directions in response to a thought provoking question.
what bothers me is when an editor and others are in a, shall we say heated, debate that has veered off topic and the editor makes one last remark, off topic, making his/her point. then shuts the thing down saying it is because it has veered off topic. leaving the others no chance for rebuttal.
that drives me nutz.

EXACTLY
for example if you ask a question about sports
it always turns into like a religious battle!
(come to think of it that happens quite a bit...and im always in the middle of it)
hmmm
anyway...spot on!