Consider a question. I post an answer to it which gets a bunch of votes:

You need to strobulate the bar, because (details).

After some time, someone else posts an answer which gets one or two votes:

As the other answer says, you need to strobulate the bar, except in the edge case that foo is true, because (details on how foo is relevant)

That person then comments on my answer:

This isn't entirely accurate - see my answer.

Should I edit my answer to include the information covered in the other answer? (Not to plagiarize, of course, but to link to or include the relevant info, while giving credit.) Assume that the other information is objectively true, and not just an alternate approach.

On one hand, if my answer is the top answer, it sounds like it'd be more beneficial to the site for it to include all useful information, and not be wrong in an edge case. If I was searching for a solution, I might well try the top answer first, without checking other answers - but in the edge case, I would find that things break (hopefully immediately, and not later) and would have to revisit the question and read more to debug. This doesn't seem optimal. On the other hand, gaining reputation as a result of adding information already described by another answer seems really scummy and redundant.

  • By "top answer" you mean "accepted answer"? – yivi May 17 at 10:10
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    We like a question to have multiple answers, one that works for 90% of the visitors and another that covers corner-cases is pretty ideal. So do nothing. Q+A isn't just beneficial to the Q-poster and googlers, the A people almost always learn more as well. – Hans Passant May 17 at 10:18
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    You can just edit to suggest the reader to read more on another answer for that specific case to avoid redundancy. – holydragon May 17 at 11:03
  • @yivi Accepted answer has a tendency to appear at the top, no matter what you sort the answers by. Or was the question sarcastic? – Eskey Eski May 17 at 11:17
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    @Eskey No sarcasm. I wanted to know if they actually meant the "accepted" answer, since they only refer to the "top" answer, which can be a different thing depending on the circumstances. I would have edited s/top/accepted/, but wasn't 100% they meant that. – yivi May 17 at 11:20
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    i will just edit and say refer the answer of B for this scenario – sidprasher May 18 at 10:13
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    Upvoting the other answer should be part of the recommended action. – Trilarion May 19 at 8:21
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    Unfortunately, although useful comments should be edited into answers, some answers on the site has serious problems that is only pointed out in the comments. Editing the answer to point out where it's wrong is definitely a good idea. – user202729 May 19 at 14:08

If you're not comfortable with making your answer complete, at least make it accurate. Describe the edge case that your answer doesn't handle, and point to the other answer if you don't want to add the information to your answer. This way, people who only read the first answer are at least aware of the edge case, instead of incorrectly thinking your answer handles everything.

I would suggest you also ask the commenter if they're okay with you incorporating solutions from their answer into your answer, and ask if they would like you to make your answer community wiki.

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    The second paragraph is not necessary in my opinion. CW invites edits from anyone; it means giving up from authorship. Paragraph one already solves the issue from all angles. – Andre Silva May 19 at 1:17
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    (1) @AndreSilva I largely agree, though I generally leave a comment to the other author pointing out I made use of their answer. (2) In any case, this is my favourite answer here. "If you're not comfortable with making your answer complete, at least make it accurate" nails it. – duplode May 19 at 14:59

No, you don't have to. The other answer covers the exception case, whilst not invalidating your answer. People who visit the question will see the other answer also if they fall into that nice category that experience foo

Your answer doesn't have to be all encompassing. It's a team effort here, and multiple answers provide multiple insights, exceptions, alternatives so people who get to this question can pick and choose what works best for them.

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    "whilst not invalidating your answer?" It's not his pointing out of an error that makes your answer wrong. It's your answer being wrong that makes your answer wrong. – Swiss Frank May 18 at 6:46

Depending on the situation, I can find it quite rude if someone does that.

If your answer doesn't have all the details then that is what your answer is.
If there is another answer that is better than yours that doesn't mean you can just "steal" the good stuff.

I think you should upvote the other answer, and if that doesn't make the good answer the top answer, leave a highlighted message at the top of your answer saying there is a better answer below, or possibly delete your answer if you find the other to be that much better.

Keep in mind SO is not about "who" made the answer, it's about what is the best answer.
If that means you have to lose a few points, then I'm sure someone will notice it and upvote you the next time they see you made a good answer.

  • Not entirely though, it's not a competition battle for the top spot. – Gimby May 17 at 11:21
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    @Gimby and that is exactly the point of my post. When you upvote another answer or delete your own that means you are not caring about the "top spot". – Andreas May 17 at 11:23
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    This site doesn’t have any mechanism for normal users to add “a highlighted message” to the top of answer. There are post banners, but those are moderator-only and have only a few canned options to choose from. I certainly hope you’re not suggesting to abuse blockquote formatting for something that is obviously not a quotation. – Cody Gray May 18 at 1:38
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    @CodyGray sure it does. You can use italics, bold, heading, horizontal lines. All these makes the message "highlighted". I don't see a blockquote as something that can't be used to highlight text, but whatever you say. Some other Stack Exchange sites use them for many other reasons. – Andreas May 18 at 6:29
  • This is not about mutual exclusive answers (one answer better than the other in all scenarios), but complementary ones. Therefore, it does not make sense deleting own answer. – Andre Silva May 19 at 1:20
  • @AndreSilva how do you know? Do you know what thread it is OP is talking about. As I read it, OPs answer worked in most cases, the other in all cases. Surly that means OPs answer is a less good duplicate of the other. If you know what post this thread is referring to then please share it. – Andreas May 19 at 2:40
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    @Andreas According to the Meta question here, the later answer opens with "As the other answer says, you need to strobulate the bar, except [...]". That presumably means it refers to the earlier answer, but without including the full explanation of how a bar is strobulated, and so the answers are indeed complementary. It would only conceivably make sense to delete the earlier answer if the tables were turned and the author of the later answer incorporated the full explanation into it. – duplode May 19 at 15:04
  • @duplode but we don't know if that is OP here condensing the answer to something smaller than it is. We can only speculate what the real thread is about. But my opinion is still the same, upvote the other answer, if the answers are complementary as you say perhaps ask the other answerer to include a larger portion of the answer to make it complete. This may seem contradictory to what I say above but since the other answerer knows foo he/she obviously knows the steps prior to going. – Andreas May 19 at 15:12
  • @CodyGray Now what? meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/388313/… he used the block quote for a non quote. What are we simple peasant supposed to think when the block quote are used like this? – Andreas Sep 9 at 13:09

I would not copy new ideas or approaches from someone else's answer. If they point out a simple mistake or error in your answer, you should definitely fix it, but if the answer introduces a new idea or novel approach or builds off your answer in a significant way, you shouldn't copy that idea. It's plagiarism if you don't fully attribute it, and, if you do, it's still rude to the person who took the time to help improve the Q&A for others.

Normally, I'd just leave it alone and let people read both answers on their own. This way, the person who came up with the idea gets the credit and their answer has the opportunity to rise in the listing by its own merits. If, however, you think the information in the other answer is important for people who read your question to know (perhaps it points out a bug in your approach, or is significantly better in a common use case), instead of copying the information, you can add a note to your answer (with a link) directing people to the other answer. Something like:

Note: This approach fails if foo is true, instead, try this alternat approach from the answer by Andreas

This way, you make sure that people get the important information from the other answer without plagiarizing. Even better, it helps drive viewers and upvotes to a useful answer that might have been otherwise overlooked. It also lets the democratic process of up and down votes work to judge the new question's merit. It may be a much better approach and will rise to the top of the question, or there might be other issues you don't see, in which case it will be downvoted – either way, copying it into your answer (even with attribution) prevents people from judging and voting on the question itself

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    "I would not copy information from someone else's answer. It's plagiarism" – It is plagiarism if and only if you pretend that you came up with the answer yourself. Nobody here has suggested to do that. – Jörg W Mittag May 18 at 6:48
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    it's better to link to the answer (using the "share" link not "the answer above or the answer below" :)) than copying. What's horrible is editing during the grace period to copy other answer. Undetectable... – Jean-François Fabre May 18 at 7:28
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    @JörgWMittag It is plagiarism if and only if you pretend that you came up with the answer yourself. That may be true, I don't know. But it's certainly not the way it works on SO. Search for "plagiarism" here on Meta and you will see that there is no questioning if the author of the plagiarised answer has came up with the answer him/her self. As far as I can see, it's the oldest answer that "rules" and all other are plagiarism. – Andreas May 18 at 9:10
  • It's only plagiarism if you copy/paste something without changes. It's not if you integrate additional details that are present in the other answer. – Martin Tournoij May 18 at 10:12
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    Plagiarism is well-defined as wrongful appropriation. Taken straight from a dictionary: "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own". There's nothing mysterious about the concept. We don't use it any differently on Stack Exchange sites. If you copy someone else's work, whether from another answer, another question, or another website, and you fail to provide proper attribution, then it's plagiarism. If you do provide proper attribution, then it's not plagiarism. There should be no confusion, or guessing. – Cody Gray May 19 at 14:58

I can't believe most of the suggestions are to leave a wrong answer in a prominent place (i.e., selected as "the answer" or with enough upvotes to get high rank), and if it doesn't handle an edge condition, it's wrong.

Why put an answer on Stack Overflow at all? To help people. Why leave a wrong answer in place, which won't accomplish your reason to answer at all? Now, some clearly-wrong answers are useful especially if they are obvious answers at first glance. They'll accrue a downvote and some comments warning people off. Better to leave that in place, just as a shipwreck is ample notice of a uncharted shoal. But a highly-voted and prominent answer, that may be as far down the list as a reader get?

I would absolutely incorporate the approach of the later, correct answer in my highly-voted, easy-to-spot one. I don't think it'd be plagiarism to block-quote the added information with credit ("as Bob added in another answer:") or to fit into the explanation a bit more (again with credit).

Granted, you might still accrue upvotes while Bob doesn't, but SO isn't a race or competition. And with your citation Bob will glean some upvotes from it as well.


It depends upon the type of information you are adding to your answer from other answers. As your answer is top voted and has some inefficiency and another user commented on your answer stating that it's not the best approach then two things will happen

  1. People will see your answer and the comment too below and move on to implement the other user's approach in their code.
  2. People will see your answer but not the comments (which most of the people do) and implement your approach in their code.

And about my first line. What if the user is not okay with you adding their information in your answer? This could also lead to plagiarism.
For that instance you should just edit your answer to say that

My approach is not the best one. Please refer to xxx user for a better approach

And upvote their answer so it can reach to the top. I've also seen people editing their question to

Please refer to xxx's answer as my approach is outdated.

And that's what you should do to guide the visitor to a better answer. Make sure that you refer to the best answer by also testing it by yourself first too.


It would depend on the amount of information that the new answer adds. If it's just a single line and can easily be integrated in your answer, then this sounds more like a "comment posted as answer" to me, and integrating it sounds like a good idea.

If there's a clear flaw in your example code that's being fixed then that's probably a good idea to integrate as well. For example a shell script not properly dealing with spaces or some program only working on one system and not another.

If it's a significantly different answer or if dealing with the edge case is non-trivial it's probably best to just leave it as a separate answer.

Is also depends on what exactly the "edge case" is. Is it something that will just error out? Probably not a problem, people will notice. Is it a more subtle thing that people may not notice? Then it may be a good idea to integrate it in your answer.

In short, I don't think there's a simple "one size fits all" answer. Use your judgement.

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