How to approach incomplete answers?

Question

Providing answers that are correct and 100% complete is a challenging task. Often you will spot answers that are generally correct, but either a small piece of the answer is incorrect or missing. How to approach such "nearly correct" or "nearly complete" answers? Should the new answer be posted? Should we edit the answer?

Answer 1

One of the easiest ways to make nearly complete answers complete is via editing (available to users who reach 1500 reputation points). This privilege should be exercised with care though, as you are interfering with someone else's post. As such, editing is recommended if you are absolutely sure of this addition/change and can back it up with an official source. It is also a good idea to notify the author of a change via comments.

Another way to suggest edits is by commenting on an answer. Clearly point the areas that you believe are incorrect or incomplete. This will allow the author of the answer to review the suggestions and make necessary edits.

You can also decide to post an entirely new answer if you believe a larger part of the answer is incorrect or missing. In this case, always make sure that you answer the question as a whole, instead of only answering the part that is missing or was incorrect. Remember that each TibiaQA answer is a separate entity and should be able to live on its own. By providing a new answer that only covers the details that were missing or were incorrect you are creating an entirely new answer that is also incomplete. If you want to cover only the parts that were missing, use the comment feature below the answer. Here are a few reasons why this is important:

• The community decides whether each of the answers is correct individually (by voting); If none of the answers are correct this might result in downvotes on your answer
• Users looking for the answer need to look all over the topic to find what they need if there's no single, complete answer
• It's time-consuming and frustrating spotting answers that keep saying "the other answers are mostly complete, but..."; You don't only need to figure out which other answers, but also merge information from all existing answers
• Only one answer can be selected as "the best answer" by the question owner; If none of the answers are complete, it makes it difficult to choose one
• Ideally, most of the users/visitors that view the question in the future only have to read through the question itself and one answer that was identified as most helpful by the community (via voting and best answer)

It's important to remember that TibiaQA is different in this matter than regular forums. We realize this is not the flow you'd see on discussion forums. This is not a forum though, but questions & answers site. The focus is on providing easily accessible and correct answers.

Keep up the good work asking and answering questions!
The TibiaQA.com team

Answer 2

I've got some doubts, so I'll explain it on this post:

https://www.tibiaqa.com/15560/during-world-change-bank-robbery-kill-boss-dont-deliver-stolen-happens?show=15563#a15563

In my opinion I gave most of information in my answer. According to your suggestions in this topic the best way to improve my answer was to edit it, since Daissy already earned 1500 points. She could also add missing info as a comment.

If she did it as it is said here, she could be happy that she improved TibiaQA's database.

When she did it as she did - by adding new complete answer, she got additional 10 points for her answer, which is quite hard these days.

So this system absolutely doesn't encourage to improve database, but to SPAM with unnecessary content.

Times when several people actively participated in scoring points ended and it is much harder to get it when no one votes up. It's also harder and harder to come up with new questions, so now most of them seems to concern low-value knowledge. Therefore, a rational solution is, unfortunately, spamming, not correction of existing answers.

Going back the the question - I decided to edit my answer and add missing information to make it better, and now we've got two the same answers... and a mess. But from the point of user's view it was worth it, because of points.

Comments

Posting duplicate (nearly the same) answers is considered spamming. Such answers can be flagged for moderator intervention. I do agree with you that the system currently doesn't encourage to improve the answers/questions of other users. I do think that a small point bonus for edits would be awesome.

As for the post you mentioned, it was converted to comment and only the part that wasn't repetitive was left.

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Yes, I agree with your opinion. But notice how many such answers are literally full.

I was going to edit my answer, but I can see that everything has already been changed, i was late :) Next time I will pay more attention to such options. I didn't even have a clue that after getting 1500 points I have the opportunity to edit someone's answer.

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Daissy don't understand me wrong, I didn't want to say that you made something bad etc. Everything is OK, you could not know. I rather wanted to show that users have no reason to spend dozens of hours on correcting old posts "for free", when they can add something new and get 5, 10 or even more points.

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@Pochwalona
I know, I know you, I understand you perfectly and I have the same opinion as you.

@Ellotris Guardian
Maybe it would be great if you introduced editing bonuses. It would be a great idea :) It would certainly improve the quality of questions and answers. I think I would participate in it myself because, as Pochwalona mentioned, now it is very difficult to get points.