I apologize for giving the negative definition (under What This Post Is Not) before the positive (under What This Post Is). I do so in order to clarify that this is not a simple reiteration of some prior posts (like those here and here) on this topic, which might sound similar and which have been unfavorably received. Feel free to skip to the positive definition.

What This Post Is Not

This post is not about established rules, per se, but rather about etiquette and best practices, toward creating informative answers. This post is not the fruit of cursory research; I have been seeking a normative answer for over an hour.

I am not complaining about strategies used by others to effectively accrue reputation. Neither am I fishing for viably competitive strategies when "racing" against established users to answer a fresh question.

If this precise topic does indeed have an accepted answer, or if it is covered via the guidelines, please know that I made an honest but unsuccessful effort to find it. Thank you for your patience.

What This Post Is

My Existing Process

Feel free to skip this.

As a new user of Stack Overflow, who wishes to productively contribute, I often skim the "Newest" feed of coding questions, within the scope of my particular domain knowledge. My goal is to help where I can, with clear and thorough answers, and in the process accrue enough reputation to exchange illuminating comments and to (eventually) place bounties on questions of particular importance to my job as a (junior) developer.

As a rule, I try to make reproducible and self-contained (ie. omitting no dependencies) the code in my answers. I also document my code granularly, to guide the poster in understanding my process, and I furnish links to external documentation. Where applicable, I include my sample output. Above all, I test my code before posting it as an answer, to ensure that it works (as portably as possible) the first time the user might implement it.

Also as a rule, I edit my answers for three reasons:

  1. To improve readability (by disambiguating my wording; fixing grammar; polishing the formatting; etc.).
  2. To correct a functional error in my code.
  3. To append an Update which introduces a superior approach by either (a) overhauling my own approach based on my new insight; or (b) crediting another user with the superior answer.

When editing for readability, I routinely make incremental edits, as I am essentially "cleaning up". When editing to update, I submit the edit in one fell swoop, as a dynamic "work in progress" would be incoherent until completion and thus unfair to the reader. When editing to fix errors, the scope of my edits will vary from incremental for the cosmetic (ex. fixing a variable name) to wholesale for the conceptual (ex. mending an overlooked boundary case).

In short

While I strive to be thorough, I feel that — at the very least — the threshold for "minimum viability" in an answer requires that (1) any code actually work, and (2) the "answerer" test such code reproducibly to ensure (1). Specifically, I feel that "complementary code" — intended to complete the code supplied in the question — should not throw an error when merged and run with the original code. For inexperienced "askers", I also feel that at least some explanatory prose is proper in an answer.


I recently attempted to answer a simple question, posed by a very inexperienced user ("the asker"), that was well within my wheelhouse.

While I typed, I noticed an experienced user ("the answerer"), with very high reputation, post an instantaneous and hasty answer. While the answerer's code was technically correct, it failed to import the necessary dependencies: had the asker appended this code to their own in their IDE, it would have thrown an error (for the unknown function). Unsurprisingly, the answer showed no sample output, as the answerer had spared no time to run (and test) the code. Finally, the answer did not contain a single word of prose, either in discussion or as a comment in the code itself; in particular, it made no mention of the missing dependencies.

Given the inexperience of the asker, and the near-certainty of a run-time error, I would not have considered this a "minimally viable answer" upon posting. To meet this threshold, I would have included the imports in my code, tested it, and made some mention of its purpose.

Shortly thereafter, the answerer altered their answer with an absolute barrage of incremental edits: one every few seconds. These edits were scattershot: several rendered the answer nearly incoherent until the remaining edits were complete, a little while later. At no instant in this period would I have considered the answer minimally viable: it simply lurched from one muddled state to the next.

In the end, these edits — which were inevitable and clearly not inspired by any new insight — culminated in a coherent answer. This answer managed to include the dependencies, elaborate on the purpose of the code, and display a sample output (which doubtless entailed a successful execution after the answer was initially posted).

The result was that the answerer "anchored" their answer as the top answer — by instantaneously posting it in haste — and then "retrofitted" it — with a flurry of predetermined edits — to meet their own standards.

The Point

I would appreciate if the Stack Overflow community could clarify the following, especially if encountered as a "foot-in-the-door" strategy to accrue reputation:

  1. Where exactly does the Stack Overflow (generally) place the threshold for a "minimally viable" answer? Are my criteria (under In Short) too restrictive? Too permissive?
  2. Does Stack Overflow (generally) consider it a breach of the guidelines ("Answer the question") — or of etiquette — to hastily post a minimally unviable answer, merely to "anchor" the answer as the earliest, and then make predetermined edits to actually answer the question? Note: I am not claiming that the answerer did this.
  3. Does Stack Overflow (generally) consider it a breach of etiquette to hastily post a sloppy yet minimally viable answer, "anchored" as the earliest, and then make predetermined edits to meet any further standards of accessibility (especially to inexperienced askers)? I do believe that answerer did this; and (more generally) that an answer containing exactly two lines of (functional) code — and nothing more — is hardly accessible to inexperienced coders.

Thank you for your consideration!


In light of some thoughtful responses, which will certainly prove useful to many users, I would like to highlight my particular motivation.

There are certain questions that elicit diverse answers of comparable viability, where the asker can select the approach that best suits their needs (ex. processing speed, memory capacity, compactness of code, etc.). However, my example involves a question so elementary that it invites only one meaningful answer, of which all later answers must be a copy—or an unnecessary convolution.

As an inexperienced user, I mostly scan for tame questions well within my wheelhouse. As such, I (and other prudent newcomers) will engage disproportionately with such elementary questions until I (we) are more established in the community and (with this validation) confident in our expertise.

And to establish oneself in this fashion, reputation is required...

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    As long as you post an answer before the OP reads the answers "earliest" is generally irrelevant. What matters is what's best or what's top of the list when they see it (generally ordered by votes and then randomly for answers with the same score) – Nick Jun 8 at 21:59
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    it's an ugly practice, and whose who do it should be ashamed... but the system promotes it occurring and there appears to be no interest in doing anything about it. In the end, it's the result that matters. If they ultimately end up with a good answer, no real harm was done from a content perspective, though it certainly does "suck" for those of us who'd rather create a complete answer from the get go. – Kevin B Jun 8 at 22:02
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    One thing you could do to make it blatantly obvious this is occurring is to perform an action that would prevent their edits from being omitted from the revision history. It doesn't solve the problem, but it prevents hiding it. – Kevin B Jun 8 at 22:06
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    Reputation is not a requirement of becoming an experienced user. However, i also want to point out that if a question is so elementary that a dozen people are biting at the bit to be the first to post an answer, there's a fairly high chance that the question is a duplicate. – Kevin B Jun 8 at 22:34
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    Minimal foot-in-the-door answers are permitted, if they provide a valid answer in their current form. Also, code samples in answers are not required to be complete runnable programs. However, if the code is so incomplete that the OP may not know how to make use of it, then that's definitely not good. And a code-only answer with no prose or explanatory comments is a very low quality answer that deserves downvoting. – PM 2Ring Jun 8 at 23:00
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    A couple of problems not mentioned is that the first to post a (eventually) great answer gets a silver Enlightened Badge (MSO) and bumps themselves in the Active Tab - depending on which site they are on they might not attract many votes or views in the first few minutes (and there's a grace period) - the reward outweighs the penalty. One upvote cancels the reputation loss of 5 downvotes, and after fixing they can spring back. – Rob Jun 9 at 0:32
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    Your (and the HighRepUsers) approach lack one needed step before answering: look for duplicates and close(-vote). The amount of "easy" questions from inexperienced coders on SO that are non-dupes trend towards zero. Beside that - if an answer in it's current state does noch fullfill your personal minimal viable whatever: downvote. – Patrick Artner Jun 9 at 5:22
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    The "new questions" tab encourages users to write the fastest answer. If you'd rather like to write longer, qualitative answers I'd recommend visiting the "most upvoted questions". A lot of them have outdated or very short answers, adding new answers to those is useful to all, there's no need to rush (and on the long term this also "pays out" reputation wise) – Jonas Wilms Jun 9 at 10:03
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    Concerning "missing imports": My IDEs do that automatically for most things, so I'd say that adding imports is not necessary if it is part of the standard library of the language. – Jonas Wilms Jun 9 at 10:05
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    In a way the described process of the FGITW seems to resemble a bit the agile software development model. You start incomplete, release early and often, and improve incrementally. It doesn't seem to be a good recipe for answering SO questions, but it surely fits into the current spirit of the time (Zeitgeist). – Trilarion Jun 9 at 14:03
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    @Armali Good catch! I meant to say "the inexperience of the asker", who would have trouble deciphering such an answer, and I have edited the sentence accordingly. – Greg Jun 9 at 18:11
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    I used to avoid encountering FGITW answerers by avoiding the "new questions" tab. Instead I had a search for questions in my tags with no answers (and score >= 0) from the day before. I could scan the results for interesting questions and take my time to research an answer with reasonable confidence that no-one else would answer in the meantime. – snakecharmerb Jun 9 at 18:36
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    Well I would have to say (being a very inexperienced dev) that I definitely appreciate full and descriptive answers that I can actually learn from. Programming in general is a very complex world when coming from other disciplines. Any help always is appreciated. – RobbB Jun 11 at 3:38
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    Me personally: I sometimes do what might look like "foot in the door": I write a short answer and post it. Then I think about it some more, and realise I can add more. Then I think maybe some code would help. As time goes by, my motivation to put in effort grows, and my answer expands. There was never an intention from the outset to do this (and being "fastest gun" never crosses my mind), it's just the same way I approach a lot of my work: small iterations. – Steve Bennett Jun 11 at 4:35
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    @SteveBennett By "predetermined edits", I mean that the edits were logically inevitable in order to make the question minimally viable; and that the poster was aware of this ahead of time. By analogy, it would be like posting the addends 318732 + 923843 = , and then later filling in the resulting sum 1242575. While the exact value of the answer would be still uncalculated at the time of posting, the answerer would have known there was only one possible edit to make. Point is, the edits were not the result of some new realization or approach: they were elementary and inevitable. – Greg Jun 12 at 2:38

I agree with you, and in all of my years of contributing to Stack Overflow, I have always followed essentially the same approach that you describe. (Well, generally, I don't test my code. I prefer to just write it in the Markdown editor directly. But I do review it thoroughly to make sure that it is correct and thoroughly explained before hitting the "Submit" button.) Regardless of what anyone else may be doing, please continue doing what you are doing; it is for the best, both for you, for the asker, and for the overall community.

Even though some may treat it like one, Stack Overflow is not a race. Our content is meant to stand the test of time. The reputation system fundamentally values quality, not speed. While the fastest answerer might accrue more reputation from that answer in the short term, if their answer is not actually the best answer on the page, then they won't be the "winner" in terms of reputation in the long term. Therefore, while it may seem like there's some sort of built-in bias against you, rest assured that is only from short-term effects. Overall, those who write clear, useful, well-explained, correct answers will come out on top. And, even in the short term, it's likely that your answer will be most useful to the asker, which tends to lead to an accept (green checkmark).

As far as your proposal regarding "etiquette", I don't really think this is an ethics issue, but I do think it is good etiquette (and common sense) to make sure that you are submitting a quality answer when you decide to submit. It doesn't have to be the perfect answer—continued improvements are welcome and encouraged. And it seems that no matter how many times I read over something before submitting, there's always at least one typo or unclear sentence that needs to be fixed later. That's just the nature of writing, and it's why we have editing—both collaborative and by the author.

I've long had a major issue with people who FGITW a complete turd (this is a technical term) into the answer box. In fact, as a moderator, if I catch you doing this (i.e., before you polish it into something reasonable and worthy of submission), I will nuke that answer (downvote and mod-delete, which prevents it from being undeleted) for the same reasons that I'd nuke any other exceptionally low-quality contribution. There is at least one other moderator and one CM who will do the same thing for answers that look to be nothing more than "placeholders".

This strikes at something you allude to: what is a "minimum viable answer". I think we all know what it is. The Help Center attempts to define it. Essentially, it is one that is coherent and that provides an actual answer to the question. Source code is not required in answers, so if you prefer to quickly post an answer with a brief explanation, and then go back later to add some "demo" code, that's fine. That's a reasonable use of FGITW. So is going back later to add in links (e.g., to the documentation and/or for further reading). And coming back later to add in an alternate approach. And any of a zillion of other things that involve appending the answer, not creating it.

If you come across something that doesn't meet our definition (or any reasonable person's definition) of a "minimum viable answer", then please flag it. It doesn't matter how old it is, or which user posted it. Stack Overflow only cares about content, not metadata. A "not an answer" flag or a "very low quality" answer flag is appropriate on an answer whenever that answer meets the criteria for those flags. If that flag results in the answer being deleted, well, then you've contributed to improving the quality of the site. If the flag gets invalidated because the answer was edited to turn it into something reasonable in the meantime, well, at least the problem was addressed and the quality of content on the site was improved.

The same goes for downvoting those answers (when you earn the privilege to do so). You might later need to reverse the downvote on answers by people who behave unethically, but at least your downvote sent a signal in the meantime that the answer did not meet your standards for a minimally viable answer.

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    I really like your answer in general, but let's be realistic, "the reputation system fundamentally values quality, not speed" is simply not true. I've seen enough users get 20K in two months just by machine-gunning answers with little to no explanation and testing. We really do not favour quality. Although with time things do improve but mostly because the community actually notices that you care about what you post and you become more or less known as an SME in your area. – Oleg Valter Jun 8 at 23:19
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    @Oleg I fundamentally believe what I say about the reputation system. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, I haven't done any sort of statistical analysis. This just reflects a deep feeling that I've had over the many years I've been here, merged with empirical observations. The people who post quality content do end up coming out on top, even though others often do manage to get a lot of points from posting mediocre answers. There's room for both, I think. But I really think we do favor quality overall. You could argue that things have changed in recent years, and call me an old fogey with... – Cody Gray Jun 8 at 23:54
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    ...antiquated ideas about how the site operates, based on hopes that never quite materialized. But I don't believe that to be so, either. In ye olden days, when there were fewer questions and all the low-hanging fruit had not yet been covered, FGITW was even easier and more rampant. Today, being able to mark these repeat questions as duplicates has tamped down on a lot of the abuse of that feature. – Cody Gray Jun 8 at 23:55
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    Cody, well, I do not disagree with you on things improving eventually just due to people still being able to recognize good content over the fast & dirty solutions. I just don't think that the system as currently working is geared towards quality. I do hope that things are not as grim as I see them but my experience is that consistently those who never cared about quality get rep needed for mod privileges much faster than those who do. I also do see the close feature (and SOCVR initiative) as a blessing. I just think things are getting better in spite the system rather than thanks to it. – Oleg Valter Jun 9 at 0:03
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    Part of it is that the people who care about moderation/curation are spending time (and, in some cases, reputation, e.g., to downvote, but mostly I think it's time) doing that, instead of posting answers. Thus, they aren't earning near the reputation that people who are spending time answering are, because they're not setting themselves up to earn rep. So it's not really about quality per se, but rather how you choose to spend your time on this site. Equally, if you post all of your answers to Meta like I do these days, you won't earn much reputation on the main site, either. :-) – Cody Gray Jun 9 at 0:12
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    I really hope you are right and I just had a bad experience (I too haven't run any queries on how things are globally). That said, I wasn't talking about those who care about curation more (I understand that be choosing to post here / in chat some forfeit the time spent on SO proper), more about those who prefer quality over quantity. I really do not think the system in its current iteration is geared towards favoring those. Maybe as a result of the outdated answers project things will improve somewhat, but I don't think it will be much. – Oleg Valter Jun 9 at 0:40
  • @CodyGray Thanks again for your thoughtful answer! After reviewing my post and doing a little more research, I realize that it was a drastic understatement to describe the "answerer" in question as having "merely" a "very high reputation". The asker's reputability makes me suspect the fault lies in my own definition of "minimal viability". However — and even this is a strong hint to those familiar with logic puzzles — I am hesitant to update my question by ballparking (within even a huge margin) the asker's rep, because I am ethically averse to implying their identity even indirectly. – Greg Jun 10 at 14:36
  • If we disregard the likely motive (reputation), one could see these as just two different ways to use the markdown editor. One person prefers to click save often, the other prefers to make many changes in between saves. – Aaron Cicali Jun 10 at 21:04
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    Just a side note about my observations with users who "machine-gun" answers... They usually have a very low badge count compared to reputation. Meaning that their answers don't typically add meaningful value to other users (quantified by votes, etc.) – Automate This Jun 10 at 21:36
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    The fundamental mistake in your assumption is that every question stands the test of time, when in reality the vast majority are forgotten five minutes after being posted. You get reputation by answering quickly, collecting those first upvotes when eyes are on it, that's it. There are few, very, very few, questions which really remain actively looked at (and voted on) over time, and those are reputation farms for the "lucky" who won the lottery of answering that question that day. – Ingo Bürk Jun 11 at 12:57
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    An answer I wrote years ago but late proves quality does not always win on a popular question flooded with answers: how to create a zip file in PowerShell. No answers beside the one I wrote had both a native solution and a way to specify where you want to place a file WITHIN the zip file. Few answers had any actual research behind them, many of them disparaged themselves ie: "This code is an ugly, ugly kluge from olden days. You do not want it." Several even use COM shell objects. My answer has 5 upvotes at #12. We need a hot answers feature. – Pluto Jun 11 at 20:48

There's a lot to take in here, but the ultimate question that I think you're teasing out is:

"What does Stack Overflow do about answers which are incomplete, unviable or otherwise inappropriate?"

To which the answer, from a technical perspective is nothing, because the system itself has no way of knowing any of those things.

The users - yes, that'd be you and me - have more power in this in that we can downvote poor answers to questions, and also flag for spam answers which actually are spam instead of an answer. So use your judgment when determining if an answer is suitable or not; you're the subject matter expert in this situation, after all!

So...my advice: if you see someone trying to game the system and their answer isn't all that great as a result, downvoting them is the best way to deal with it. It sends the signal to the system (which needs our help) to start restricting their ability to answer questions.

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    Hi @Makato, thanks for reading! To clarify, my question mostly centered on (1) posting a sloppy response as quickly as possible, simply to be the first poster and so "get a foot in the door" for reputation; and then (2) editing after the fact, to "retrofit" the answer such that it meets minimal standards for functionality and common courtesy. – Greg Jun 8 at 22:13
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    @Greg: That happens often but to be perfectly honest, if the answer provides value, that itself is not a problem. It's the fact where someone shoots fast and decides to get something out the door that's trash. To be blunt, maybe the fact that someone could get an answer out the door within the first two minutes of it being asked is a strong signal that the question is pretty low quality...? – Makoto Jun 8 at 22:18
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    If the answer provides value. Big if right there. But yes, if it does, then it's fine. – Cody Gray Jun 8 at 22:19
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    @CodyGray Especial thanks for that clarification! In the end, the edits made the eventual answer quite solid; I was curious specifically about the practice of cynically "getting a foot in the door" before editing the answer into something acceptable. – Greg Jun 8 at 22:34
  • @Makoto Thanks again for the helpful discussion. Your appraisal is correct: that question in my example was quite elementary. Thing is, elementary answers will be disproportionately engaged by answerers (like me) who are new to SA, because the prudent among us newcomers tend to build reputation and establish ourselves by posting answers well within our wheelhouse (rather than risking much on a speculative answer). – Greg Jun 8 at 22:38
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    Yeah, this definitely happens more often on elementary-level questions. That's an important point, so I'm glad that Makoto is calling that out in a comment. Perhaps it should also be added to the answer, especially given the most recent update to the question? Personally, I prefer to avoid the really elementary-level questions. There's too much competition to get a fast answer, and they're a lot less interesting. I'd rather take the time to solve a harder, more interesting problem; I get more enjoyment (and more learning experience) out of that. Your mileage may vary, of course. – Cody Gray Jun 8 at 22:41
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    @CodyGray I definitely agree regarding those intriguing challenges. When I branch out on SA beyond the parameters of my job — where an urgent problem requires that I maintain commenting privileges and (realistically) place the occasional bounty — I expect I'll feel freer to enjoy the problem-solving for its own sake, without being so conscious of reputation. – Greg Jun 8 at 22:56
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    I agree with this answer, but the problem is, downvotes cost a lot more to a low-rep user (OP has 86 rep, I'm sure quite hard-earned from the sound of it) than a high-rep user. I didn't start downvoting answers regularly until I had 10k rep and felt like losing 1 or 2 points wasn't much to ask to make the site a better place. I mention -2 because revenge downvotes are a reality. Sure, all of this is mostly psychological, but it factors in. Also, when answering hunkered down in a snippet, one may not notice other answers going up before it's too late. – ggorlen Jun 9 at 4:48
  • "if the answer provides value, that itself is not a problem" well, no problem besides: demotivating new users, incentivizing others to copy your bad example, better answers being stuck at the bottom, a feeling of elitism if high-rep users do this, ... But at least the answerer gets a few more virtual points. – Christian Strempfer Jun 11 at 13:11

Let me tell you a very common experience which I've had in the python tag. This relates to your question.

For starters, the python tag is huge. It has a lot of modules, meaning you'd only be able to answer questions on a few of these modules. Each of these tags have somewhat less traffic than the main tag.

Anyways, a question is asked. It's a borderline closable question, one that's pretty rare. Immediately I look at the question, and I fix their code and make the changes neccessary. I then write up a hefty explanation, making sure the grammar is correct, and the formatting looks good.

When I exit PyCharm to copy the contents of my .md file, I see that it has two answers. One of which is usually entirely wrong or misleading, and another which is just code with a simple explanation. The answer has momentary value, and is not valuable at all in the long run.

This is the FGITW game. It's what you mention in your question, and it makes getting reputation a real pain.

I'd like to adress something which Cody Gray said:


Realistically, all of the questions asked today (whether it be the regex tag or python tag), are all asked by 1 rep users who don't care for the site. They ask, and the first answer they get is accepted. Then the asker never looks back because, well, they have their answer!

And on many tags (feel free to correct me) the low traffic makes it so that once a question is answered, it doesn't really get revisited. I can say this for sure on the tag (which is a popular python module used for graphics).



Reputation isn't neccessarily the only way to become more established with this community. There are so many things happening in the background, where we stop spam from taking over the network, where we close useless questions, and where we find non-answers that should be deleted off of the site.

You do need some reputation to gain access to moderation tools. I'd say the minimum is 125 (flagging, downvoting, chatting, etc.). If you want access to the majority of tools, 3k is probably the way to go, and relatively, 3k is not a lot of rep.

And finally, if you see a high rep user answering questions with half answers to gain rep, just downvote the answer which you see. You only need 39 reputation more to be able to do that.

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    Questions get revisited over time by people who have the same problem and are searching for a solution. This is why, when you answer questions with general applicability, and you post a good answer that is likely to be extremely helpful to others in the future, aside from just the OP, you are going to accrue upvotes over time, and thus, even if later rather than sooner, will win the "long game" when it comes to reputation. What you say about Qs mostly being asked by new users who don't care for the site is true, but has always been true. It's enough for the answerers to be the ones who care. – Cody Gray Jun 8 at 23:50
  • Isn't the point of Python having a bunch of modules so that you can just dash off things like import antigravity and enter_weightlessness() without needing to bother with loading up an IDE, doing any kind of complex syntax analysis, or whatever else? :-) – Cody Gray Jun 8 at 23:52
  • @CodyGray Yes, and it is very useful :D. But it takes a while to look through the documentation of each module and learn it. But from what I know, it's easier than c++ :). – 10 Rep Jun 9 at 0:16

My general advice after some 10+ years is to not pay attention to when other answers are posted or how bad/good they are. Or how much rep the person who posted it got, for that matter. Forget about FGITW. If you spend time on your answer it will get rewarded in the long run (if you care about reputation). The user base here may be a snarky bunch (yours sincerely included) but they do appreciate quality.

Quite often I arrive "late to the party" to some question many days old, read the answers and find them lacking in some way. Then post an answer anyway, regardless of if the other answers are up-voted, accepted and so on. This will not stop you from getting up-votes in the long run. Quite often at least the OP will appreciate the answer and maybe change which one they marked as accepted.

And those answers you spent time on will lay there and slowly trickle in up-votes over time.

Personally I'm far beyond caring about rep. The ambition and purpose of the site should be to give answers of high technical quality.

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    Also please note that questions that can be answered very quickly are likely FAQ duplicates or uninteresting typo questions. These shouldn't be answered but closed. – Lundin Jun 9 at 14:31
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    It's easy to not care about rep when it comes in passively without taking any action (which is the result of years of providing good quality answers.) Just answer good questions with good answers and you too can not care about rep – Kevin B Jun 9 at 14:37
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    @KevinB You have to write those answers though... they didn't write themselves :) But it's easy not to care about rep since it isn't actually good for anything. After 20k you've unlocked all user mod tools. But I gave up on user moderation long ago so I don't even want those tools. – Lundin Jun 9 at 14:42
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    @Lundin Thanks for the advice! I should note: I am a junior developer, and I use this site for research to build solutions, fix bugs, and implement best practices at my job. Since I try to be thorough in my (hours of) research, I expect the questions I eventually do post will be unanswered, idiosyncratic, and tricky. Nonetheless, these questions might be urgent, and bounties (reputation) can be needed to promptly attract answers of high quality. – Greg Jun 9 at 14:56
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    @Greg The bounty mechanic is silly, I never paid attention to it personally. It's mostly just used as a way to gift rep to other users. If you want a question to get more attention, it is more important to use a good title and correct tags. – Lundin Jun 10 at 8:41
  • @Lundin Ironically, I might just be on the verge of bountying this question of mine. This is a rather frustrating challenge made complex by technicalities, and few people seem to have read the necessary details. While I have used a hint in an answer to hack together my own non-canonical solution, I am still actively seeking answers that are truly stable, extensible, and canonical in form. Should I take my own solution to Code Review? – Greg Jun 30 at 16:01
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    @Greg If you have a complete and working code, then sure. Code Review isn't nearly as spammy as SO, so you will almost certainly get responses. – Lundin Jul 1 at 6:32

To avoid the FGITW issue, I try to do the exact opposite: instead of rushing to answer new questions, I check old questions that have no answers. Of course, you'll find questions of dubious quality, but every once in a while, you'll find very interesting and difficult questions that are very rewarding to answer. Those questions can also lead to a great reputation boost.

Since these are old questions, you can be sure that no one is also trying to answer, so you can take as much time as needed to write your answer. One added benefit if you care about this kind of thing is that you can earn the Necromancer badge.

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    Yes, that's what one usually has to do to avoid the omnipresent FGITW. Methinks most of those 746183 users employ a similar tactic (I am one of them as well) from time to time. It is also much more satisfying to get a reply from the OP that asked a question N years ago that they thought they'd never get an answer to that. – Oleg Valter Jun 10 at 12:06

While a FGITW cowboy might post like that, there's another, similar concept to keep in mind - FDITW (fastest downvote in the west). They might eventually end up with a good quality answer but in the meantime, it's an incoherent blob of garbage. People reading the answer will give it the downvote it deserves.

It's very rare for someone to go back and re-evaluate things that they downvoted in the past. That means those early downvotes end up sticking, even if the final version is upvote-worthy.

Answering questions like that is a gamble. You'd technically be the first to answer, but at the same time you create a window of time where you're very likely to get downvoted. Compare that to the way that you write answers, where only the final product is visible and no such intermediate garbage state is publicly visible. Assuming both answers are correct you'll end up with similar upvote counts, but the other guy will still be saddled with those early downvotes. Thus, your answer gets ranked higher.

You have to weigh the benefits of being the first answer against the likelihood that someone will read the question and downvote your answer-in-progress before you're finished. I, personally, don't see any advantage unless you're hunting a specific badge for some reason, but that should be pretty rare.

If this was a huge problem, the site could limit how many times you can edit a question/answer in a certain period of time. The only reasons I can think of for an answer being edited every few seconds are people posting like this, defacement/bots, edit wars, or someone who doesn't understand how the "preview" feature works. None of those seem like use cases that need to be preserved.

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    A meaningful point, but for simpler questions (only some of which are duplicates) that window of time is very narrow, and the asker will likely use timestamp as a tiebreaker when accepting an answer from candidates of comparable quality. There also the potential for the "Sleeper Strategy", which dodges those downvotes by "hiding" until finishing and undeleting the answer. Since users rarely view the edit history on an answer, the latter strategy might also cast a plagiarized answer as the plagiarizer, also by virtue of the timestamp. – Greg Jun 10 at 19:22
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    Now given my limited SO experience, I cannot say whether this strategy is prolific across SO, but I doubt the window — between the initial post and the edit that reaches "minimum viability" — is wide enough to make the downvotes a prohibitive deterrent for nimble answerers. In my example, that window lasted roughly 1 minute, and it takes a few moments (since the initial posting) to even read the answer, let alone make the considerations for a downvote or flag. I have to say: if the answerer from my example does employ this strategy regularly, it has certainly proven wildly successful. – Greg Jun 10 at 19:35
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    @Greg Even if the question asker uses the "created" timestamp instead of the "modified" timestamp to resolve a tie for the "accepted" bonus, it's usually irrelevant in the long run. The amount of rep you get from having your answer accepted is dwarfed by the rep you get from providing a quality answer that gets lots of upvotes. If the question gets so little traffic that the "accepted" bonus is significant, than it's probably a question that wasn't worth spending that much time on in the first place. – bta Jun 10 at 21:01
  • @Greg If all of those edits took place over roughly a minute, then I'd think this was someone who didn't know how to preview their post without submitting it (posting on a mobile device maybe?). I wonder if someone with more database-fu than I can use the site's analysis tools and query how many answers get edited more than X amount of times in a Y minute window by the same person. That would be a good indicator of how common this is. – bta Jun 10 at 21:04
  • Thanks for the reply! To discuss your point — "The amount of rep you get from having your answer accepted is dwarfed" — I should note that this answerer has answered a metric ton of questions, many of an elementary nature, and they rank among the most prolific on SO. Given their years of experience, I'm not sure they were "someone who didn't know how to preview their post". Then again, I have no info to suggest they employ the edit barrage on a routine basis. – Greg Jun 10 at 22:14
  • After a month of observation — this user and I cross paths routinely on new questions in my specialty — I can say that: (1) This user is an institutional expert in their field, and they hold most of the badges on Stack Overflow. (2) This user rapidly posts dozens of "lean" answers daily, with "predetermined edits" every couple days. (3) The questions are mostly elementary, and the answers rarely garner more than a handful of upvotes beyond acceptance. (4) By sheer volume, this user accrues hundreds daily in rep. My theory is that they're angling for a reputation milestone... – Greg Jul 16 at 14:08

My approach is simple.

If an answer is bad (code would throw an obvious error or logic does not result in outcome desired by OP) then I downvote; no constructive comment, they don't deserve one. If I'm sticking around and writing an answer then I'll check if the answer was edited into something coherent and remove my downvote before I move on to other things.

If an answer properly answers the question but provides minimal or no explanation then I leave it be (no vote) and provide a comment suggesting that their answer would benefit from an explanation.

I participate in the tag and more often than not will provide a regex-only answer and it usually suffices since I supply working proof at regex101. Occasionally someone will ask for an explanation so I do try to oblige.

However, if I feel the need to explain a regex off the bat then I will do something like this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/58414289/2191572

Occasionally, I will post just the regex with a note saying "Explanation will be provided shortly" if I want to just get the answer out there and if someone wants the explanation then they just have to wait. Sometimes my explanation can take 15-20 minutes to write and I'd be lying if I said gamification is not a motivating factor =)

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