This sounds right to me. If I were building a Q&A site that genuinely wanted to encourage high-quality answers, I'd implement something like a 1-hour window wh

This sounds right to me. If I were building a Q&A site that genuinely wanted to encourage high-quality answers, I'd implement something like a 1-hour window where all answers are invisible immediately after the question is posted. This is to give people time to work on a good quality answer, without racing to be the first and gain those precious early upvotes. The UI could still indicate how many other people have answered / are answering, and if answer volume became a problem you could perhaps block new answers during that window after the first 20 or so have landed. When the hour is over, answers are displayed in random order and the existing site mechanics around upvotes etc kick in. It feels like that could potentially address the problem of low-effort answers killing off the good ones.