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As a frequent self-answerer across several SE sites, I feel like any solution will need to include a community-awareness element. Technical solutions probably won't work in isolation. Perhaps the biggest problem is the perception of "double-dipping". It's absolutely true that I often get a great deal mileage out of self-answeredself-answered questions in terms of reputation. Since self-answers are often clear and generally useful, they tend to attract upvotes from people who stumble across them looking for solutions to their problems. And since questions tend to be evaluated in part by the quality of their answers, they tend to be upvoted too.

But, at least for me, self-answered questions are actually more work than one regular question plus one regular answer. The answer part is especially labor-intensive since I know many of the pitfalls the asker will run across (since I'm the asker). My answers try to cover all the angles. However, in my zeal to provide the best and most complete answer, I've found that my questions tend to suffer neglect. Quite often, the question has just one sensible answer: the one I provided.


Therefore, I suggest defining a set of "best-practices" or community-enforced requirements for posting self-answered questions:

  1. Search diligently for existing questions that can be answered with the knowledge you wish to share. (As an aside, many of my self-answered questions begin life as true questions that I discover a solution to in the process of researching the question. Searching for a previously-asked question is one of my early steps.)

Recourse: if the community discovers that a duplicate question exists, the self-answered question should be closed. Closed questions gather fewer upvotes than open questions.

  1. Write the question from the perspective of someone truly struggling with an answer. Be as clear as possible about the difficulties and list some dead-ends that might be chased down. Don't save all your firepower for the answer.

Recourse: the usual suite of tools should be used with special attention to self-answered questions. Close undeveloped questions as "Not a Real Question". I can't think of a better case for using that reason than a poorly-worded self-answered question—it really wasn't an open question.

  1. Provide an encyclopedic answer. Don't just answer the immediate question, but fix it two (or even three) ways. Give the reader everything they might need to answer related questions themselves.

Recourse: write a better answer or an answer that fills in the gaps. Nothing makes me happier than the ask a question I already have an answer for and have someone else answer it better than I did. Since self-answers are designed to provide long-term, generalized help, better answers will garnish more reputation than mediocre answers.

  1. Edit questions and answers diligently to respond to comments and criticism. Tend your blog-like posts as if they were, well, your own blog.

Recourse: comment on and edit posts that are not as good as they can be. Let the author know that the quality of their work matters to you and that improvements are appreciated.

Conclusion

As a rule, people are good at detecting "cheating" and try to punish it. Since self-answered questions bare some marks of illegitimate reputation grabs, folks who write them must be especially careful to go about asking and answering with integrity. The community should be aware that such posts are often designed to make the internet a better place rather than building reputation on the site. The later, however, is a welcome side-effect.

As a frequent self-answerer across several SE sites, I feel like any solution will need to include a community-awareness element. Technical solutions probably won't work in isolation. Perhaps the biggest problem is the perception of "double-dipping". It's absolutely true that I often get a great deal mileage out of self-answered questions in terms of reputation. Since self-answers are often clear and generally useful, they tend to attract upvotes from people who stumble across them looking for solutions to their problems. And since questions tend to be evaluated in part by the quality of their answers, they tend to be upvoted too.

But, at least for me, self-answered questions are actually more work than one regular question plus one regular answer. The answer part is especially labor-intensive since I know many of the pitfalls the asker will run across (since I'm the asker). My answers try to cover all the angles. However, in my zeal to provide the best and most complete answer, I've found that my questions tend to suffer neglect. Quite often, the question has just one sensible answer: the one I provided.


Therefore, I suggest defining a set of "best-practices" or community-enforced requirements for posting self-answered questions:

  1. Search diligently for existing questions that can be answered with the knowledge you wish to share. (As an aside, many of my self-answered questions begin life as true questions that I discover a solution to in the process of researching the question. Searching for a previously-asked question is one of my early steps.)

Recourse: if the community discovers that a duplicate question exists, the self-answered question should be closed. Closed questions gather fewer upvotes than open questions.

  1. Write the question from the perspective of someone truly struggling with an answer. Be as clear as possible about the difficulties and list some dead-ends that might be chased down. Don't save all your firepower for the answer.

Recourse: the usual suite of tools should be used with special attention to self-answered questions. Close undeveloped questions as "Not a Real Question". I can't think of a better case for using that reason than a poorly-worded self-answered question—it really wasn't an open question.

  1. Provide an encyclopedic answer. Don't just answer the immediate question, but fix it two (or even three) ways. Give the reader everything they might need to answer related questions themselves.

Recourse: write a better answer or an answer that fills in the gaps. Nothing makes me happier than the ask a question I already have an answer for and have someone else answer it better than I did. Since self-answers are designed to provide long-term, generalized help, better answers will garnish more reputation than mediocre answers.

  1. Edit questions and answers diligently to respond to comments and criticism. Tend your blog-like posts as if they were, well, your own blog.

Recourse: comment on and edit posts that are not as good as they can be. Let the author know that the quality of their work matters to you and that improvements are appreciated.

Conclusion

As a rule, people are good at detecting "cheating" and try to punish it. Since self-answered questions bare some marks of illegitimate reputation grabs, folks who write them must be especially careful to go about asking and answering with integrity. The community should be aware that such posts are often designed to make the internet a better place rather than building reputation on the site. The later, however, is a welcome side-effect.

As a frequent self-answerer across several SE sites, I feel like any solution will need to include a community-awareness element. Technical solutions probably won't work in isolation. Perhaps the biggest problem is the perception of "double-dipping". It's absolutely true that I often get a great deal mileage out of self-answered questions in terms of reputation. Since self-answers are often clear and generally useful, they tend to attract upvotes from people who stumble across them looking for solutions to their problems. And since questions tend to be evaluated in part by the quality of their answers, they tend to be upvoted too.

But, at least for me, self-answered questions are actually more work than one regular question plus one regular answer. The answer part is especially labor-intensive since I know many of the pitfalls the asker will run across (since I'm the asker). My answers try to cover all the angles. However, in my zeal to provide the best and most complete answer, I've found that my questions tend to suffer neglect. Quite often, the question has just one sensible answer: the one I provided.


Therefore, I suggest defining a set of "best-practices" or community-enforced requirements for posting self-answered questions:

  1. Search diligently for existing questions that can be answered with the knowledge you wish to share. (As an aside, many of my self-answered questions begin life as true questions that I discover a solution to in the process of researching the question. Searching for a previously-asked question is one of my early steps.)

Recourse: if the community discovers that a duplicate question exists, the self-answered question should be closed. Closed questions gather fewer upvotes than open questions.

  1. Write the question from the perspective of someone truly struggling with an answer. Be as clear as possible about the difficulties and list some dead-ends that might be chased down. Don't save all your firepower for the answer.

Recourse: the usual suite of tools should be used with special attention to self-answered questions. Close undeveloped questions as "Not a Real Question". I can't think of a better case for using that reason than a poorly-worded self-answered question—it really wasn't an open question.

  1. Provide an encyclopedic answer. Don't just answer the immediate question, but fix it two (or even three) ways. Give the reader everything they might need to answer related questions themselves.

Recourse: write a better answer or an answer that fills in the gaps. Nothing makes me happier than the ask a question I already have an answer for and have someone else answer it better than I did. Since self-answers are designed to provide long-term, generalized help, better answers will garnish more reputation than mediocre answers.

  1. Edit questions and answers diligently to respond to comments and criticism. Tend your blog-like posts as if they were, well, your own blog.

Recourse: comment on and edit posts that are not as good as they can be. Let the author know that the quality of their work matters to you and that improvements are appreciated.

Conclusion

As a rule, people are good at detecting "cheating" and try to punish it. Since self-answered questions bare some marks of illegitimate reputation grabs, folks who write them must be especially careful to go about asking and answering with integrity. The community should be aware that such posts are often designed to make the internet a better place rather than building reputation on the site. The later, however, is a welcome side-effect.

replaced http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/ with https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/
Source Link

As a frequent self-answerer across several SE sites, I feel like any solution will need to include a community-awareness element. Technical solutions probably won't work in isolation. Perhaps the biggest problem is the perception of "double-dipping". It's absolutely true that I often get a great deal mileage out of self-answered questions in terms of reputation. Since self-answers are often clear and generally useful, they tend to attract upvotes from people who stumble across them looking for solutions to their problems. And since questions tend to be evaluated in part by the quality of their answers, they tend to be upvoted too.

But, at least for me, self-answered questions are actually more work than one regular question plus one regular answer. The answer part is especially labor-intensive since I know many of the pitfalls the asker will run across (since I'm the asker). My answers try to cover all the angles. However, in my zeal to provide the best and most complete answer, I've found that my questions tend to suffer neglect. Quite often, the question has just one sensible answer: the one I provided.


Therefore, I suggest defining a set of "best-practices" or community-enforced requirements for posting self-answered questions:

  1. Search diligently for existing questions that can be answered with the knowledge you wish to share. (As an aside, many of my self-answered questionsquestions begin life as true questions that I discover a solution to in the process of researching the question. Searching for a previously-asked question is one of my early steps.)

Recourse: if the community discovers that a duplicate question exists, the self-answered question should be closed. Closed questions gather fewer upvotes than open questions.

  1. Write the question from the perspective of someone truly struggling with an answer. Be as clear as possible about the difficulties and list some dead-ends that might be chased down. Don't save all your firepower for the answer.

Recourse: the usual suite of tools should be used with special attention to self-answered questions. Close undeveloped questions as "Not a Real Question". I can't think of a better case for using that reason than a poorly-worded self-answered question—it really wasn't an open question.

  1. Provide an encyclopedic answer. Don't just answer the immediate question, but fix it two (or even three) ways. Give the reader everything they might need to answer related questions themselves.

Recourse: write a better answer or an answer that fills in the gaps. Nothing makes me happier than the ask a question I already have an answer for and have someone else answer it better than I did. Since self-answers are designed to provide long-term, generalized help, better answers will garnish more reputation than mediocre answers.

  1. Edit questions and answers diligently to respond to comments and criticism. Tend your blog-like posts as if they were, well, your own blog.

Recourse: comment on and edit posts that are not as good as they can be. Let the author know that the quality of their work matters to you and that improvements are appreciated.

Conclusion

As a rule, people are good at detecting "cheating" and try to punish it. Since self-answered questions bare some marks of illegitimate reputation grabs, folks who write them must be especially careful to go about asking and answering with integrity. The community should be aware that such posts are often designed to make the internet a better place rather than building reputation on the site. The later, however, is a welcome side-effect.

As a frequent self-answerer across several SE sites, I feel like any solution will need to include a community-awareness element. Technical solutions probably won't work in isolation. Perhaps the biggest problem is the perception of "double-dipping". It's absolutely true that I often get a great deal mileage out of self-answered questions in terms of reputation. Since self-answers are often clear and generally useful, they tend to attract upvotes from people who stumble across them looking for solutions to their problems. And since questions tend to be evaluated in part by the quality of their answers, they tend to be upvoted too.

But, at least for me, self-answered questions are actually more work than one regular question plus one regular answer. The answer part is especially labor-intensive since I know many of the pitfalls the asker will run across (since I'm the asker). My answers try to cover all the angles. However, in my zeal to provide the best and most complete answer, I've found that my questions tend to suffer neglect. Quite often, the question has just one sensible answer: the one I provided.


Therefore, I suggest defining a set of "best-practices" or community-enforced requirements for posting self-answered questions:

  1. Search diligently for existing questions that can be answered with the knowledge you wish to share. (As an aside, many of my self-answered questions begin life as true questions that I discover a solution to in the process of researching the question. Searching for a previously-asked question is one of my early steps.)

Recourse: if the community discovers that a duplicate question exists, the self-answered question should be closed. Closed questions gather fewer upvotes than open questions.

  1. Write the question from the perspective of someone truly struggling with an answer. Be as clear as possible about the difficulties and list some dead-ends that might be chased down. Don't save all your firepower for the answer.

Recourse: the usual suite of tools should be used with special attention to self-answered questions. Close undeveloped questions as "Not a Real Question". I can't think of a better case for using that reason than a poorly-worded self-answered question—it really wasn't an open question.

  1. Provide an encyclopedic answer. Don't just answer the immediate question, but fix it two (or even three) ways. Give the reader everything they might need to answer related questions themselves.

Recourse: write a better answer or an answer that fills in the gaps. Nothing makes me happier than the ask a question I already have an answer for and have someone else answer it better than I did. Since self-answers are designed to provide long-term, generalized help, better answers will garnish more reputation than mediocre answers.

  1. Edit questions and answers diligently to respond to comments and criticism. Tend your blog-like posts as if they were, well, your own blog.

Recourse: comment on and edit posts that are not as good as they can be. Let the author know that the quality of their work matters to you and that improvements are appreciated.

Conclusion

As a rule, people are good at detecting "cheating" and try to punish it. Since self-answered questions bare some marks of illegitimate reputation grabs, folks who write them must be especially careful to go about asking and answering with integrity. The community should be aware that such posts are often designed to make the internet a better place rather than building reputation on the site. The later, however, is a welcome side-effect.

As a frequent self-answerer across several SE sites, I feel like any solution will need to include a community-awareness element. Technical solutions probably won't work in isolation. Perhaps the biggest problem is the perception of "double-dipping". It's absolutely true that I often get a great deal mileage out of self-answered questions in terms of reputation. Since self-answers are often clear and generally useful, they tend to attract upvotes from people who stumble across them looking for solutions to their problems. And since questions tend to be evaluated in part by the quality of their answers, they tend to be upvoted too.

But, at least for me, self-answered questions are actually more work than one regular question plus one regular answer. The answer part is especially labor-intensive since I know many of the pitfalls the asker will run across (since I'm the asker). My answers try to cover all the angles. However, in my zeal to provide the best and most complete answer, I've found that my questions tend to suffer neglect. Quite often, the question has just one sensible answer: the one I provided.


Therefore, I suggest defining a set of "best-practices" or community-enforced requirements for posting self-answered questions:

  1. Search diligently for existing questions that can be answered with the knowledge you wish to share. (As an aside, many of my self-answered questions begin life as true questions that I discover a solution to in the process of researching the question. Searching for a previously-asked question is one of my early steps.)

Recourse: if the community discovers that a duplicate question exists, the self-answered question should be closed. Closed questions gather fewer upvotes than open questions.

  1. Write the question from the perspective of someone truly struggling with an answer. Be as clear as possible about the difficulties and list some dead-ends that might be chased down. Don't save all your firepower for the answer.

Recourse: the usual suite of tools should be used with special attention to self-answered questions. Close undeveloped questions as "Not a Real Question". I can't think of a better case for using that reason than a poorly-worded self-answered question—it really wasn't an open question.

  1. Provide an encyclopedic answer. Don't just answer the immediate question, but fix it two (or even three) ways. Give the reader everything they might need to answer related questions themselves.

Recourse: write a better answer or an answer that fills in the gaps. Nothing makes me happier than the ask a question I already have an answer for and have someone else answer it better than I did. Since self-answers are designed to provide long-term, generalized help, better answers will garnish more reputation than mediocre answers.

  1. Edit questions and answers diligently to respond to comments and criticism. Tend your blog-like posts as if they were, well, your own blog.

Recourse: comment on and edit posts that are not as good as they can be. Let the author know that the quality of their work matters to you and that improvements are appreciated.

Conclusion

As a rule, people are good at detecting "cheating" and try to punish it. Since self-answered questions bare some marks of illegitimate reputation grabs, folks who write them must be especially careful to go about asking and answering with integrity. The community should be aware that such posts are often designed to make the internet a better place rather than building reputation on the site. The later, however, is a welcome side-effect.

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Source Link

As a frequent self-answerer across several SE sites, I feel like any solution will need to include a community-awareness element. Technical solutions probably won't work in isolation. Perhaps the biggest problem is the perception of "double-dipping". It's absolutely true that I often get a great deal mileage out of self-answered questions in terms of reputation. Since self-answers are often clear and generally useful, they tend to attract upvotes from people who stumble across them looking for solutions to their problems. And since questions tend to be evaluated in part by the quality of their answers, they tend to be upvoted too.

But, at least for me, self-answered questions are actually more work than one regular question plus one regular answer. The answer part is especially labor-intensive since I know many of the pitfalls the asker will run across (since I'm the asker). My answers try to cover all the angles. However, in my zeal to provide the best and most complete answer, I've found that my questions tend to suffer neglect. Quite often, the question has just one sensible answer: the one I provided.


Therefore, I suggest defining a set of "best-practices" or community-enforced requirements for posting self-answered questions:

  1. Search diligently for existing questions that can be answered with the knowledge you wish to share. (As an aside, many of my self-answered questions begin life as true questions that I discover a solution to in the process of researching the question. Searching for a previously-asked question is one of my early steps.)

Recourse: if the community discovers that a duplicate question exists, the self-answered question should be closed. Closed questions gather fewer upvotes than open questions.

  1. Write the question from the perspective of someone truly struggling with an answer. Be as clear as possible about the difficulties and list some dead-ends that might be chased down. Don't save all your firepower for the answer.

Recourse: the usual suite of tools should be used with special attention to self-answered questions. Close undeveloped questions as "Not a Real Question". I can't think of a better case for using that reason than a poorly-worded self-answered question—it really wasn't an open question.

  1. Provide an encyclopedic answer. Don't just answer the immediate question, but fix it two (or even three) ways. Give the reader everything they might need to answer related questions themselves.

Recourse: write a better answer or an answer that fills in the gaps. Nothing makes me happier than the ask a questionquestion I already have an answer for and have someone else answer it better than I did. Since self-answers are designed to provide long-term, generalized help, better answers will garnish more reputation than mediocre answers.

  1. Edit questions and answers diligently to respond to comments and criticism. Tend your blog-like posts as if they were, well, your own blog.

Recourse: comment on and edit posts that are not as good as they can be. Let the author know that the quality of their work matters to you and that improvements are appreciated.

Conclusion

As a rule, people are good at detecting "cheating" and try to punish it. Since self-answered questions bare some marks of illegitimate reputation grabs, folks who write them must be especially careful to go about asking and answering with integrity. The community should be aware that such posts are often designed to make the internet a better place rather than building reputation on the site. The later, however, is a welcome side-effect.

As a frequent self-answerer across several SE sites, I feel like any solution will need to include a community-awareness element. Technical solutions probably won't work in isolation. Perhaps the biggest problem is the perception of "double-dipping". It's absolutely true that I often get a great deal mileage out of self-answered questions in terms of reputation. Since self-answers are often clear and generally useful, they tend to attract upvotes from people who stumble across them looking for solutions to their problems. And since questions tend to be evaluated in part by the quality of their answers, they tend to be upvoted too.

But, at least for me, self-answered questions are actually more work than one regular question plus one regular answer. The answer part is especially labor-intensive since I know many of the pitfalls the asker will run across (since I'm the asker). My answers try to cover all the angles. However, in my zeal to provide the best and most complete answer, I've found that my questions tend to suffer neglect. Quite often, the question has just one sensible answer: the one I provided.


Therefore, I suggest defining a set of "best-practices" or community-enforced requirements for posting self-answered questions:

  1. Search diligently for existing questions that can be answered with the knowledge you wish to share. (As an aside, many of my self-answered questions begin life as true questions that I discover a solution to in the process of researching the question. Searching for a previously-asked question is one of my early steps.)

Recourse: if the community discovers that a duplicate question exists, the self-answered question should be closed. Closed questions gather fewer upvotes than open questions.

  1. Write the question from the perspective of someone truly struggling with an answer. Be as clear as possible about the difficulties and list some dead-ends that might be chased down. Don't save all your firepower for the answer.

Recourse: the usual suite of tools should be used with special attention to self-answered questions. Close undeveloped questions as "Not a Real Question". I can't think of a better case for using that reason than a poorly-worded self-answered question—it really wasn't an open question.

  1. Provide an encyclopedic answer. Don't just answer the immediate question, but fix it two (or even three) ways. Give the reader everything they might need to answer related questions themselves.

Recourse: write a better answer or an answer that fills in the gaps. Nothing makes me happier than the ask a question I already have an answer for and have someone else answer it better than I did. Since self-answers are designed to provide long-term, generalized help, better answers will garnish more reputation than mediocre answers.

  1. Edit questions and answers diligently to respond to comments and criticism. Tend your blog-like posts as if they were, well, your own blog.

Recourse: comment on and edit posts that are not as good as they can be. Let the author know that the quality of their work matters to you and that improvements are appreciated.

Conclusion

As a rule, people are good at detecting "cheating" and try to punish it. Since self-answered questions bare some marks of illegitimate reputation grabs, folks who write them must be especially careful to go about asking and answering with integrity. The community should be aware that such posts are often designed to make the internet a better place rather than building reputation on the site. The later, however, is a welcome side-effect.

As a frequent self-answerer across several SE sites, I feel like any solution will need to include a community-awareness element. Technical solutions probably won't work in isolation. Perhaps the biggest problem is the perception of "double-dipping". It's absolutely true that I often get a great deal mileage out of self-answered questions in terms of reputation. Since self-answers are often clear and generally useful, they tend to attract upvotes from people who stumble across them looking for solutions to their problems. And since questions tend to be evaluated in part by the quality of their answers, they tend to be upvoted too.

But, at least for me, self-answered questions are actually more work than one regular question plus one regular answer. The answer part is especially labor-intensive since I know many of the pitfalls the asker will run across (since I'm the asker). My answers try to cover all the angles. However, in my zeal to provide the best and most complete answer, I've found that my questions tend to suffer neglect. Quite often, the question has just one sensible answer: the one I provided.


Therefore, I suggest defining a set of "best-practices" or community-enforced requirements for posting self-answered questions:

  1. Search diligently for existing questions that can be answered with the knowledge you wish to share. (As an aside, many of my self-answered questions begin life as true questions that I discover a solution to in the process of researching the question. Searching for a previously-asked question is one of my early steps.)

Recourse: if the community discovers that a duplicate question exists, the self-answered question should be closed. Closed questions gather fewer upvotes than open questions.

  1. Write the question from the perspective of someone truly struggling with an answer. Be as clear as possible about the difficulties and list some dead-ends that might be chased down. Don't save all your firepower for the answer.

Recourse: the usual suite of tools should be used with special attention to self-answered questions. Close undeveloped questions as "Not a Real Question". I can't think of a better case for using that reason than a poorly-worded self-answered question—it really wasn't an open question.

  1. Provide an encyclopedic answer. Don't just answer the immediate question, but fix it two (or even three) ways. Give the reader everything they might need to answer related questions themselves.

Recourse: write a better answer or an answer that fills in the gaps. Nothing makes me happier than the ask a question I already have an answer for and have someone else answer it better than I did. Since self-answers are designed to provide long-term, generalized help, better answers will garnish more reputation than mediocre answers.

  1. Edit questions and answers diligently to respond to comments and criticism. Tend your blog-like posts as if they were, well, your own blog.

Recourse: comment on and edit posts that are not as good as they can be. Let the author know that the quality of their work matters to you and that improvements are appreciated.

Conclusion

As a rule, people are good at detecting "cheating" and try to punish it. Since self-answered questions bare some marks of illegitimate reputation grabs, folks who write them must be especially careful to go about asking and answering with integrity. The community should be aware that such posts are often designed to make the internet a better place rather than building reputation on the site. The later, however, is a welcome side-effect.

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Jon Ericson
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