Proposal: "help" and "curation" phases

[HeapUnderflow]

@MartijnWeterings

So one way to facilitate this (I am just brainstorming now) would be if one could write a sort of community wiki that encapsulates other answers. E.g. on the top is a box that expresses that the present answer is a combination of previous answers and presents a list of authors and links to those previous answers.

This reminds me very much of Wikum-style summary nodes, which I suggested already for comments. The way it works is you would select the answers and write a summary combining the best parts from the answers (with tools making it easy to quote from and link to the originals). The system then would hide the summarized answers by default, but interested users can expand the summary node or follow links to see the original answers.

[user1306322]

@Olin

Take a look at my answer https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/24428/which-chemicals-can-be-used-to-clean-electronics/24432#24432 . This is exactly the kind of edit you describe. If I were still on the site, I’d roll back the additional content recently added.

Do you (and others) think that this addition should have been added as a separate sub-answer (not a comment, a different kind of post, in a similar place to comments) where it could have its own authorship (anonymous author in this instance) and its own score? Or maybe as a normal answer, quoting relevant portions of yours and adding that extra bit of information, to avoid adding extra post types.

Personally, I also found this suggested edit inappropriate, as it might ruin the original author’s intent, style and adds details which might be obvious enough to omit. And I think that additions of such substance should bear the consequence of being voted on separately, so that in case they worsen the original post, the original author doesn’t suffer from the future downvotes.

[Olin]

@user1306322

Do you (and others) think that this addition should have been added as a separate sub-answer (not a comment, a different kind of post, in a similar place to comments) where it could have its own authorship (anonymous author in this instance) and its own score? Or maybe as a normal answer, quoting relevant portions of yours and adding that extra bit of information, to avoid adding extra post types.

Personally I thought the additional “information” was too tangential to bother including anywhere. However, if the person who added it really felt it was important enough to say it, then he should have written his own answer. That would have given someone the opportunity, for example, to point out that the issue has nothing to do with VLSI. Either way, it would be subject to up/down votes on its own, reflecting on this other person instead of me.

[einpoklum]

Someone on MSE has suggested a few times

Link please… let’s not repeat the discussion over there.

that questions go through two phases, with the UI clearly indicating which phase the question is in. The first phase is asker-centered, focusing on helping the asker. The second phase starts when the asker either accepts an answer or hasn’t interacted with the question for some period of time. It focuses on making the question useful for more people.

I disagree. Some people, myself included, often provide answers which are specifically known not to help the answer per se, but be relevant to other people reading the question. Or - only briefly tying-in from the asker’s question to a more general point or principle they wish to elucidate. At the same time, I occasionally give specific answers to old questions, e.g. because people had failed to notice something
or because technology has progressed since the question had last been considered.

Similar answers are merged,

I’d say this is a different suggestion altogether. I’m not entirely and categorically against that. But perhaps a stronger differentiation between proper questions and dupes/aliases rather than a complete merge.