Why do we have this silly answer featured on the tour page?

Question

Apparently one of the single-use accounts is now setting the example for questions to asks and answers to give. Is there a way to fix this on the tour page? (Otherwise I could say we've been epically trolled.)

Answer 1

It seems like the question was picked by an algorithm. However, we as moderators are able to manually override the selection of the algorithm by picking from one of its top picks.

From those questions which the algorithm offered me, I have picked the question "Can a General Election be called by a new Prime Minister?" for now, because it is a typical political process question with no ideological baggage attached and a well sourced answer. However, it's not the perfect example, because the accepted answer is contradicted by an unaccepted answer with a much higher score.

So I am open to other proposals in this regard. The questions the algorithm offers us right now are:

• Can a General Election be called by a new Prime Minister?
• Has there ever been a true instance of unregulated capitalism?
• In the US, can a former president run again?
• If/When UK leaves the EU, can a future goverment conduct a referendum to join the EU?
• Is it possible to live as a British/Canadian/Australian while openly disavowing the Monarchy?
• What do Democrats have to gain, politically, by preventing Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court?
• Why weren't any sanctions imposed on India for not signing the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons?
• Must the UK leave the EU?
• Are government ministers elected anywhere?
• What policy arguments do people make in favor of legalizing marijuana?
• Why does the U.S. left-wing party hate being called "socialist", but in France the left-wing party proudly calls itself "the Socialist Party"?
• Has a libertarian party ever won a parliamentary election anywhere?

If you think we should pick one of these questions instead, feel free to post a competing answer to this question.

Answer 2

I like this quesiton:

In the US, can a former president run again?

1. It's a simple, clear, objective question
2. There's a well-written, highly-upvoted, accepted answer
3. It's not controversial or about current-events

Answer 3

Looking back at the 2nd question (the one that was featured when I asked), I see that the "algorithm" has pinocchios built in. Specifically, it elevated an answer with +2/-1 (so +1 total score) to +4 somehow, and checked it as accepted, which I'm not sure it ever was.

So the only safe workaround for the current algorithm seems to be so select a question with no contradictory (or bad) answers, otherwise the algorithm can make any question look silly on the tour page (by picking the worst non-deleted answer and making it look "best".)

So a non-controversial question in this regard is probably

Are government ministers elected anywhere?

Of course it has very "meh" answers and one can argue that it's barely suitable for the SE format as there's no clear best answer there right now (nor is it clear what the best answer should look like for question like that), although the tour-page algorithm will probably pick one!