4 ms·

You can edit the top answer or post a new answer, I have got 50 odd votes from adding asp.net's encryption/decryption methods that were added in 3.5 to old .net

You can edit the top answer or post a new answer, I have got 50 odd votes from adding asp.net's encryption/decryption methods that were added in 3.5 to old .net encryption questions. I've done it on a few other answers too, if the top answer seems clunky or inelegant, I tend to dig a bit deeper to see if there's a better way. Also, scrolling down a bit in the answers you usually find new ways of doing something as answer 3 or 4. Just upvote it. Or edit the answer into the top answer.

marcosdumay 10y ago
You can. Most people can't. As the site gets aggressive against newcomers and old timers decide they have better things to do, there will be less and less people available edit them. And don't think those editions are as high quality as the ones that come by the official channel, where literally anybody in the world with the needed knowledge can reply, and there is a robust process for vetting. Besides, despite any theoretical possibility, people mostly do not edit old SO answers. There are exceptions, but outdated answer mostly stay there.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  I'm an incredibly lazy programmer, I remember nothing, it's simply not worth it imho. I hate man pages and specs and generally reading boring tech docs. I hate memorising stuff. I Google incredibly basic stuff like how to read files, how to read a web page (something that changes every 5 months in .Net), hell, even basic jQuery functionality. The difference is that I have the knowledge deep down, I just use SO and Google as a prompt. I know the correct answer as soon as I see it. I get exposed to a lot of basic answers on SO, and generally they're right. SO is generally good and is not suffering the problem you or the OP claim.
- smsm42 10y ago
  The site isn't aggressive against newcomers, it's aggressive against bad form questions/answers. Which is usually, it is true, done by newcomers because they don't know how to make a good form ones. This is a social problem which is very hard to solve - how to make people produce high quality content without discouraging them too much when they produce low quality. Some people would be annoyed and leave. But I think SO found a model that largely works - at least for the most of my questions, I found pretty good answers. For some, I found none, but neither did I find answers in any other place.
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    > it's aggressive against bad form questions/answers You're absolutely wrong in that case. Particularly answers being "good" or "correct" is not part of the mission statement; and the rules reject fixes of questions by default for not being "in the spirit of the poster". All SO aims for is having the most questions/answers. Nothing else.
    - smsm42 10y ago
      That wasn't my experience. In fact, this: > All SO aims for is having the most questions/answers. Nothing else. Is demonstrably false. If that were the only aim, questions would never be closed and there would be no need for a moderation system. They fact that they do have moderation system and do police questions and answers is the proof that quality is part of the equation.
      - Mithaldu 10y ago
        That just weeds out the questions that would make SO look obviously bad. It does nothing to affect the quality of answers that look ok, but are actually problematic. And in those cases "spirit of poster" always trumps correctness.
user5994461 10y ago
> You can edit the top answer or post a new answer Nope you can't. - You'll be blocked if your edit is not "in the spirit of the originally post(er)". If you only have to add a separate and standalone paragraph at the end on a newer subfeature (like your asp example), it's generally fine. If you have to rewrite one of the main paragraph, the reviewers will systematically reject your edit. Typically, that means that there is no way to update an obsolete post when the tools or best practices have changed, because it's considered major changes diverging from the original author. - Combine that with the aggressive policy of closing and locking down questions, and it's impossible to post a new separate answer on most of the questions.
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  Absolutely this. I ran into the issue today where somebody had posted an ambiguous answer. Mods rejected edits to clarify, the user themselves said "it's not ambiguous to me", and the question itself is locked.

marcosdumay 10y ago

You can. Most people can't. As the site gets aggressive against newcomers and old timers decide they have better things to do, there will be less and less people available edit them. And don't think those editions are as high quality as the ones that come by the official channel, where literally anybody in the world with the needed knowledge can reply, and there is a robust process for vetting. Besides, despite any theoretical possibility, people mostly do not edit old SO answers. There are exceptions, but outdated answer mostly stay there.

mattmanser 10y ago
I'm an incredibly lazy programmer, I remember nothing, it's simply not worth it imho. I hate man pages and specs and generally reading boring tech docs. I hate memorising stuff. I Google incredibly basic stuff like how to read files, how to read a web page (something that changes every 5 months in .Net), hell, even basic jQuery functionality. The difference is that I have the knowledge deep down, I just use SO and Google as a prompt. I know the correct answer as soon as I see it. I get exposed to a lot of basic answers on SO, and generally they're right. SO is generally good and is not suffering the problem you or the OP claim.
smsm42 10y ago
The site isn't aggressive against newcomers, it's aggressive against bad form questions/answers. Which is usually, it is true, done by newcomers because they don't know how to make a good form ones. This is a social problem which is very hard to solve - how to make people produce high quality content without discouraging them too much when they produce low quality. Some people would be annoyed and leave. But I think SO found a model that largely works - at least for the most of my questions, I found pretty good answers. For some, I found none, but neither did I find answers in any other place.
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  > it's aggressive against bad form questions/answers You're absolutely wrong in that case. Particularly answers being "good" or "correct" is not part of the mission statement; and the rules reject fixes of questions by default for not being "in the spirit of the poster". All SO aims for is having the most questions/answers. Nothing else.
  - smsm42 10y ago
    That wasn't my experience. In fact, this: > All SO aims for is having the most questions/answers. Nothing else. Is demonstrably false. If that were the only aim, questions would never be closed and there would be no need for a moderation system. They fact that they do have moderation system and do police questions and answers is the proof that quality is part of the equation.
    - Mithaldu 10y ago
      That just weeds out the questions that would make SO look obviously bad. It does nothing to affect the quality of answers that look ok, but are actually problematic. And in those cases "spirit of poster" always trumps correctness.

user5994461 10y ago

> You can edit the top answer or post a new answer Nope you can't. - You'll be blocked if your edit is not "in the spirit of the originally post(er)". If you only have to add a separate and standalone paragraph at the end on a newer subfeature (like your asp example), it's generally fine. If you have to rewrite one of the main paragraph, the reviewers will systematically reject your edit. Typically, that means that there is no way to update an obsolete post when the tools or best practices have changed, because it's considered major changes diverging from the original author. - Combine that with the aggressive policy of closing and locking down questions, and it's impossible to post a new separate answer on most of the questions.

Mithaldu 10y ago
Absolutely this. I ran into the issue today where somebody had posted an ambiguous answer. Mods rejected edits to clarify, the user themselves said "it's not ambiguous to me", and the question itself is locked.