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I have asked quite a few questions now on TeX.SX and got good answers for most of them. Which I would like to thank everyone how contributed to this.

However often I do adjust the answer (that I accepted) a little to fit my needs entirely. I would also like to share these revised answers to the community as to give at least a little bit back to all the support I have gotten.

To this end I have tried to include the final solution somehow. Today I have tried to do it by adding the finally used solution to the end of my question (Case 1) and another time I put the answer in the top of the question (Case 2). In both cases I try to link to the person that has lead to finding the answer as I am grateful for their help.

What is your take on this. Should I do this at all or would you consider it bad style? In principle I see three options:

  1. Leave the question as is and write a comment on the accepted answer (but there might not be enough space in there)
  2. Do as I did in Case 1
  3. Write an additional answer to the question detailing the changes made to the original answer (in this case I would still accept the answer that helped me the most to get to my final answer)

What I really would like is a feature that would allow me to reply to the accepted answer with the implemented solution. Basically an answer to an answer kind of thing. I think it would be good if this option could only be used by the original author of the question as to prevent the thread to get to cluttered. Also in the case of this question I believe a feature like this could have helped structuring the development of the solution a bit clearer. (I have not tried to see if anything like this has been discussed previously and just added it her as I felt that it fits the original question.)

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  • You always have the possibility to add an answer of your own, where you gave credits to other answers of your question or add your final solution to your original question, stating some thanks to user .... expression. On the hand, I have sometimes the expression that questions are posed really unprecisely so that it is often not possible to fulfill the request completely, leaving some issues and providing such an solution, constructed of code fragments of many users is a little stressing, leaving the impression of well, your answers were not 100% that want I wanted, I found one of my own.
    – user31729
    May 26, 2014 at 16:23
  • @ChristianHupfer I do get your point, and I admit on some occasions my questions where not written very well (I feel not the case for any of the linked ones) and needed added info. However I feel that in many cases some details are lost in the minimal example. So solutions such as for instance for Case 1 above are spot on to what I have asked. So putting my updated solution is just to show what I made out of what has been provided in the answer. The intention behind it is Thanks for the answer! I helped me on my way to get what I wanted. I don't want to diminish the authors contribution!
    – MatoBehr
    May 26, 2014 at 17:38
  • I also do get your point, and I did not intent to say that one of your questions were illposed or could lead to misunderstandings. I believe, there is no real answer to your Meta question here: I depends on personal views.
    – user31729
    May 26, 2014 at 17:41
  • Not demonising the authors contribution is the hole point of asking this question. Putting the answer in the original post may detour people from looking at the answer but adding the final solution as a alternative answer may leave people to not notice it at all. So thats the dilemma I felt to be in.
    – MatoBehr
    May 26, 2014 at 17:43
  • @ChristianHupfer No worries. I didn't take it that way. I was just hopping that there is a established procedure for it. But in any case I am happy for any thoughts on the matter. :-)
    – MatoBehr
    May 26, 2014 at 17:45
  • @ChristianHupfer The meta site is for discussion, so not having a definitive answer is fine. But it is a place to try to find out about community consensus, so differing opinions are welcome.
    – Alan Munn
    Jun 2, 2014 at 19:55
  • @AlanMunn: I agree with you, a multitude of views/answers will improve this site further (although I like it very much so far ;-)
    – user31729
    Jun 9, 2014 at 7:39

1 Answer 1

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In my opinion, adding your particular final solution either to your question or as a separate answer is rarely a good idea, especially if your solution builds extensively on the existing answers. The goal of the site is not really to solve your problem, but to provide answers to questions that are asked. With this in mind, assuming the answers provided do indeed answer the question, how you used them to solve your specific problem is usually not so relevant. For most questions (which if accompanied by a good minimal example) this should almost always be the case: the minimal example is rarely the actual use case.

Adding a solution to the question usually detracts from the question itself, and adding a separate answer based heavily on the existing answers is often looked upon as just reputation grabbing (even if it's not.)

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  • I agree with this completely. Your last sentence is what prompted me to post this question. What I try is to always include a reference to any input that has helped me along the way. Thats kind of my attempt to try avoid coming across as reputation grabbing. Thanks for your thoughts on the matter.
    – MatoBehr
    Jun 4, 2014 at 16:05

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