Should we encourage posting distinct answers separately? (Particularly for [single-word-requests])

Question

In a comment on this [single-word-request] answer, the question was raised:

I'm … adding all my ideas to one answer. Is that the right way? Rather than generating many answers and letting each one fend for its own votes?

It's a good question. For questions that have concise, competing answers (I'm thinking in particular of single-word-requests and phrase-requests), should we encourage users to break each idea into a separate answer?

It might help further separate wheat from chaff, and I don't think it should make a difference from a user's perspective: he'll get as much rep, if not more, by breaking out his responses (because all the people who would have voted for the composite answer will still vote for one of the component answers; and some people who would not have voted for the composite answer because it contained something they didn't like might vote for a "clean" component answer that doesn't contain that language).

Is there already an established or recommended best practice here?

Answer 1

I have been struggling with this issue. I often answer single word request, and I often have an initial reaction. I post it. Not infrequently, I think of another answer that is somewhat divergent from the first. I then add it. If the addition is based on feedback, or long after my initial post, I usually label it as a Supplement.

At various points in my editing, people vote up, down, or ignore me.

From an answerer's point of view, that is fine. But from a viewer's perspective, it's a problem. Let's say my answer (collective) now gets several upvotes. Which of my answers (individual) has earned the endorsement of my peers? Unless there is a comment pointing out which element of my compound answer (or which several in a multi-layered rant) is worthy of praise, how does the person seeking to weigh the crowd sourced valuation know which part(s) is worthy.

If our goal is creating a clear database of information, we should not offer only YES, NO, and NO OPINION votes for answers that say Mars, vanilla ice cream and my sister's fountain pen.

Let's keep alternative answers separate.

[I would modify this position to allow a laundry list type answer where there is little distinction, or where we are trying to show the extensive range of possibilities rather than focus on a particular word or meaning.]

Answer 2

Concerning the posting of two or more answers separately, @Dan Bron asks:

Is there already an established or recommended best practice here?

This is what happened to me.

Once, when I was still a fledgling, I posted two answers to a question that boiled down to orthography. My first post was brief, to the point and effective but users asked me to "explain" why I sustained this opinion. Without wanting to clutter the first post, which had garnered a number of upvotes (3 or 4) I decided to post a second "answer", more detailed, containing more references, Ngrams etc. Effectively speaking it was as if I had written an extensive footnote. People were free to either approve or disagree, the response was positive and I received a higher number of upvotes than first post which laid pretty much dormant.

I was then asked (very politely) by a mod to either delete one of the posts or merge the two together. It was said that users believed I was looking to gain rep points unfairly, because both my posts could be upvoted. In short, I was accused of "milking the system".

Highly offended, I protested that several times I had seen users post two or more answers, and provided the links to prove it. It was pointed out to me that a user could post several answers if the answers were significantly different from one another. Only on those circumstances did the site permit this practice.

In the meantime, I remembered seeing one user who had posted six separate answers on one question. Again it was NOT a single-word-request, but a question dealing with grammar. The answerer had chosen to break down the question in six different parts, and received a total of (I think) eight upvotes.

When I signalled this discrepancy in the system, it was suggested that it was permissible because the answers were different from one another. I wanted to observe that however, all six answers could have been merged into one, but by this time it was clear I was losing the war.

In the end, my pride wounded, I chose to delete both my posts before the mod deleted one or edited my post to merge the two answers together.

After that episode I don't think I have ever posted two separate answers, but I have seen others do so, not often admittedly, and not only for single-word requests.

Conclusion

• If a user posts different answers which are distinct and offer alternative solutions, the site will tolerate this practice.
• If the separate posts can be merged, it will be encouraged but not necessarily enforced.
• If a user posts two (or more) answers which are linked to each other, and someone flags them, the mod is constrained to act.

Answer 3

I would advocate for each answer being posted separately for two reasons:

1) Combined answers may contain one good and one bad answer. In those cases, both voters and the OP may be conflicted in designating their votes (or acceptances), since upvoting an answer may be an endorsement of the bad answer, and downvoting a good answer is "throwing the baby out with the bath water". This lack of precision may serve to detract from participation.

2) Combined answers may offer two separate good answers. If there are two good answers, the voting by the community can help discern the best of two good options. By combining the answers, this handicaps the Questioner from the benefits of the community input, in an important way.

Unless we are considering a very strict institutionalization of 1 answer per submission, and 1 submission per user, or some modification to the voting process - both of which I would be disinclined to do - we should advocate for 1 answer per submission, and support users to make multiple submissions where multiple, separate answers are given.

One check on "serial equivalent answers" could be adding a flag for "multiple equivalent answers submitted". A programmed process could combine those answer from a particular user that are flagged. This would be a simple append process, ordering it first by votes received, and then in order of time of post. To manage votes, perhaps we should only keep the highest vote tally, and forfeiture of the vote from the other posts.

Answer 4

When I answer SWR questions I typically add a bunch of detail about each potential match in order to address the entire area being discussed. English often doesn't have an exact phrase that fits and I think splitting each section into its own answer would make it harder to understand.

A few examples:

• Is there English word corresponding to Japanese “Bureikoh” meaning an occasion you can talk freely disregarding status and position?
• Word/phrase/idiom to describe avoiding answering a question by stating the question doesn't need to be asked
• Is there a word to describe a highly desirable cursed treasure?

While I see the argument for splitting any of those answers up, I think they work best as is. Various comments will address portions of the answer and I will typically integrate the extra information into the full answer.