Can anyone see edits which occured before the 5 minute mark after posting?

Question

I have noticed some people in Stack Overflow who write answers just for the sake of adding an answer, and maybe answering first. And when warned by others, and additionally flagging them, that's when they try improving their answers.

All these happen before the 5 minute mark where there is no "edits" history.

And so I wonder if anyone can see, especially the moderators, the "mistakes" within the 5 minute mark.

Situation:

I flagged a poor answer (very short, or just a link, or totally non-sense) at one moment, when seconds later someone warned the poster and the poster changed it (stunningly with a detailed version). I flagged a "late correct edit" answer as poor - which could reject my flag.

Answer 1

Nobody, including moderators, and (probably) excluding developers, can see the edits done during the grace period; if you have flagged a post, the moderators would not see any evidence of what you are saying. This is the reason why it has been suggested to make visible the first version of the post, which means that when a post is edited at least once (during the grace period) after creating it, the revision page would show 2 revisions, instead of none as it is actually done.

Consider that the "very low quality" flag is probably going to be rejected in any case. That flag should be used for answers that cannot be fixed by editing them; if it is not possible to edit them to make clear what they mean, then the answer is not a real answer.

Answer 2

I typically down-vote and/or comment and give the user the opportunity to improve their answer (whether it is a "first post" placeholder or just a terrible answer). There is little point to try and punish someone after they've done this, and mods aren't going to delete an answer that is good even if it didn't start so good.

Rather than trying to punish the behavior, I think it should simply be deterred. As illustrated on a question already pointed out:

Make first draft of a new answer part of the permanent revision history

1. if we get rid of the enlightened badge there will be much less incentive to rush in with a garbage placeholder and fill it in with a proper answer later. There will still be some incentive, as the earlier answers usually get a higher percentage of the votes, and it gets harder and harder over time to earn the enlightened badge anyway (only very simple questions seem to yield answers with > 10 up-votes anymore).

2. barring 1., if the original placeholder garbage is part of the permanent history of a question, it becomes easy to demonstrate when a user has done this. Nothing needs to automatically happen because of this, and there shouldn't necessarily repercussions even if it is pointed out (unless it is outright plagiarism, and again, yes, this has happened). But the fact that the poster soon learns that their original cutting into line is clearly visible in the revision history, I would hope that is enough of a deterrent.

As others suggest both here and elsewhere, the end result is not the problem. These users usually end up posting a final answer that is decent even if the path they took there was not 100% honest (and clearly has motives outside of the spirit and intent of the site). So I do identify with the unfavorable opinion cast upon the behavior - it just feels scammy to cut in line with nonsense just to be first in line.