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In some cases we tend to adapt or quote some of the previous answers answered by veterans like Jon Skeet or some others.In this case how can you show your courtesy to them?

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3 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

Usually you'd just link to the original answer and elaborate on it where needed.

All content on Stack Exchange is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license, which means you can reuse them so long as you give proper attribution. That's really all that's needed unless you want to look up people's contact info and thank them explicitly. You can do that, but it's up to you and not explicitly required.

Keep mind, though, that if you think that an answer to another question answers the question you're looking at perfectly, then the question you're looking at might be a duplicate and you should vote to close or flag it as such instead of answering with a link to another answer.

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Just wondering if these are mutually exclusive in your opinion? i.e. Is there any reason not to do both: vote to close as dup, and answer with a link and a short explanation of what is in the linked answer? –  chown Nov 20 '11 at 5:42
@chown Well if you think the only thing two questions share is an answer then they may not be dupes, because I suspect the real world case of a complex answer being the answer to two different questions is slim. With dupes, a pointer to a particular answer might be appropriate if you think that the questions are dupes, but there is 1 particular answer that is most helpful to the asker of the new question e.g. other answers on the first question were giving code examples in C# and this new question asked for a ruby answer, point them at the one ruby sample in the original question in comments. –  RobM Nov 20 '11 at 10:17
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Veteran (well known or famous?) users like Jon Skeet shouldn't be treated any differently from anyone else. Show courtesy by mentioning their name or giving a link.

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I completely agree with you, but by veteran I mean some of them with more experience in the field,there are definitely some knowledge that we get from experience, hence those people like Jon Skeet had provided certain classic answers from the so called experience, and I meant to adapt them :)) cheers! –  COD3BOY Nov 21 '11 at 14:42
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Stack Overflow should be about providing the best answer. Including "thank you" notes or references just clouds the answer. So I would use any source of information, including that from competing answers, and compile it into the best possible answer.

As a way of paying respect, instead of a reference or thank you comments, I would upvote the answer which has valuable information.

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