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There is a long-standing problem that is the subject of many posts on Stack Overflow. After close to a year of working on the core problem, I have a solution that I not only claim solves the problem, but that successfully handles an impressive unit test.

I ask this as at one point a few years ago I had a bunch of my responses deleted for "spamming" and I'd really like to find some approved way to proceed. What I'd like to do now is as follows.

1) post the question and respond to my own post with the answer

then either:

a) find most of the old posts, many of which have selected answers (usually a reasonable solution but not really the ideal or perfect one), and add new comment to the question pointing to the newly added post. (But what if comments are closed for that post?)

or

b) add an edit line to the bottom of the original question saying that there has been a significant breakthrough in solving the question, with a URL pointing to the my post.

Certainly if I don't do a) and b), life goes on, people still code. But the reason I spent the past year on this solution was to allow other developers to leverage using it.

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You should find the "best" example of an existing version of your question (best largely meaning having the best existing answers but question quality is important too), flag all other versions of your question as duplicates of that one question and post your answer on that one question.

It is important that all entry points to a question lead to a single set of answers, which is why the duplicate system exists, equally if your answer is indeed the best it will be pointed to by many many duplicates.

What we absolutely do not want is the same answer posted in several places, because then if an update is made to one then all the rest have to be found.

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  • By "flag all other versions of your question as duplicates" - just to clarify - these would not be mine but posts over the past few years all with multiple answer to essentially the same question. I think its pretty easy to do this marking - well - technically that is. The current best answer has some good answers if not perfect one. Also, the best one has a current selected answer, so I can of course add another anyway. In that case, is adding a comment to the original question on that post appropriate - comment would state another recent answer was added that should be at least examined?
    – David H
    Nov 29, 2013 at 21:03
  • @David I'm assuming you haven't posted your version of the question yet, so yes not including your question. When a new answer is posted the question OP is automatically notified so it's not necessary to post a comment but no ones really going to mind either way
    – Richard Tingle
    Nov 29, 2013 at 21:09
  • I didn't post anything earlier, waiting for clarifications. In my experience users post a question, get an answer, and if they award it move on. If a better one is posted, most won't even read it (its not their problem anymore). In this specific case, there are probably 20 answers on each of the questions, and I'm just afraid my new one on the best post will get totally lost in the noise. A small comment would let someone reading the post that my answer postdates the answer awarding and should be of interest to the reader. No try to get the award changed, just disseminate.
    – David H
    Nov 29, 2013 at 21:13
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    @David Hmm, what I would suggest is a comment on the accepted answer indicating why it is insufficient
    – Richard Tingle
    Nov 29, 2013 at 21:19

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