show intent to answer question

Question

When I answer a question, I prefer to make the answer extensive - with a good MWE, a screenshot, some code comments, links to other questions, a solution that possibly goes a bit further than asked for. It takes some time to write an answer like this, and often it happens that somebody else posts an answer before I am fully finished and happy with the result.

If the other answer has the same solution or a better one (shorter/easier/better results) then I discard my own answer. When my solution is different but equally good or perhaps better, or possibly interesting for showing some general techniques, etc., I post it as a second answer. However, when I do discard my answer, I feel like my effort has been for nothing (except for learning something new myself).

Therefore, I would like to have some kind of "I am working on an answer"-button, so potential answerers can see that there is somebody who is, well, working on an answer, and decide not to start an answer of their own at this point - or to speed up :)

Alternatives would be to leave a comment (seems like the wrong place), to post an incomplete answer (seems wrong in general), or to announce in chat (will reach only chatroom regulars). Any thoughts on this?

Answer 1

Consider this regarding your request: Who will this benefit? Not the community, and possibly not even the OP.

The main purpose of this seems to be personal. That is, you want to tell others "please don't answer this question, because I am answering it." Fine. I doubt it'll change people's behaviour and make them stop considering to answer a question. Why? You don't know who's writing up the answer (not that it should matter) nor what they're writing. Moreover, even though this remains a community-driven knowledge base, reputation remains a driving force behind people's contributions and this is individual-based. So, people will still feel like they can contribute something before someone else, because they may end up gaining some reputation from that.

I think a better course of action is to answer a question without even considering that others may also answer the same question. Write it up to the best of your abilities, adding as much information as possible and posting it. If the answer is completely covered by someone else, then delete it. If yours has an advantage over someone else's hopefully the community will using their voting power (and logic) to distinguish the answer rank.

A counter-argument to your suggestion would involve considering how to deal with the following scenario: Someone clicks the "I am working on an answer"-button but takes a week to completely write up their (comprehensive) answer. Should the community sit in anticipation for this answer without doing anything? By that time, the OP may have moved on to other forums looking for help. Speed in answering remains one of the things that questioners come here for. The other surely is quality.

Ultimately, the "answer that helped [the OP] most" will be selected as the "correct answer" and this is very subjective. You could end up writing "the best answer ever", only to "lose out" to someone else's code-only answer (say).

Answer 2

If you don't want to waste your time answering questions some top user will answer better and quicker than you, you could try my technique.

Usually, when I work, I don't have time to spend here. So, when I see a post I could answer to, I flag it as my favorite clicking on the star under the upvote/downvote icons:

When I have time, I scroll the list of my favorites:

and, if there is already a good answer to the question I marked, I click again on the star to de-flag it. If there is not, I answer being (almost) certain not to waste my time.