Should I edit an answer to add a MWE and the corresponding output?

Question

Recently I edited my first post here (about tfrac and sfrac commands) by adding a MWE and an output picture.

I did it because I like to see these two elements in an answer. In this particular case, it also permits to compare the size of the different commands "outputs".

But my question is: Is it always a good idea to edit an answer in order to add a MWE and the corresponding output? Even if the answer just give a simple command like here (where the neq command is given)?

I mean, can I do it without any hesitation when I see an answer without these two features?

What if the author likes his/her answer to be very concise?

I understand that edit should be carefully used, so I don’t want to disturb anything by doing this…

Answer 1

I'd recommend not editing others' answers and adding MWEs with output, because invariably your choice of what is minimal might not be the same as someone else's. For example, some people use

\documentclass{article}
% preamble stuff
\begin{document}
% stuff
\end{document}

as their MWE template, while others use

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
% preamble stuff
\begin{document}
% stuff
\end{document}

(when a font-specification is independent of the answer/solution) or even

\documentclass{standalone}
% preamble stuff
\begin{document}
% stuff
\end{document}

(when standalone is a non-standard or base class for a document and therefore is technically not minimal. In fact, standalone may not be included in all (La)TeX distributions.).

The best suggestion would be to comment on the post and request the OP to do that, or write up your own MWE and output and post that in a comment for future visitors (code can be posted on Pastebin and images just with a link after adding it to a dummy post). Something like This answer, [compiled into an MWE](<URL>), produces [this output](<image URL>).

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For your own answers, I'd highly recommend posting a minimal example and output, because it makes the content far more consumable to the viewer. Spoon-feeding viewers with readily-consumable content means less effort to understand what's going on and should be more valuable.