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As noted in the blog, users can now answer their own questions while asking it.

I'm curious to monitor how people use this feature. I'm wondering if there is any tool/filter (perhaps just for 10k+ users) that allows us to keep an eye on such questions. I have some concerns over how they will be moderated when they are dups, off-topic, etc. and would like to see for myself whether such concern is warranted.

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    How I wish this were a self-answered question. May 23, 2012 at 2:24
  • It crossed my mind, but alas, I had nothing to offer. :(
    – Kirk Woll
    May 23, 2012 at 2:33

2 Answers 2

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As Jeff notes, this has been possible since day one - there are thousands of them on Stack Overflow. So you can just write a query (with human tolerances, since practically-speaking answering <= 1 second after asking is a bit tricky without the checkbox):

Note that plenty of these do attract alternate answers, and the asker's own answer isn't always the one rated most useful by the voters. Self-answering offers you the challenge of writing both a good question and a good answer; if you fail at either one of these, the community will let you know.

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  • That query is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
    – Kirk Woll
    May 23, 2012 at 14:05
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What need is there? How is this different than any other SO question and answer(s)?

Other than the answer coming in at exactly the same time as the question -- which you could easily duplicate by having your answer pre-composed at the time you ask the question, then pasting it in immediately after asking -- it's subject to all the same voting, bumping, and review processes as every other question, whether they are self-answered or not.

(Yes, it is true that we eventually started blocking under 100 rep users from self-answering for 8 hours due to abuse, but that's still an edge case at best, and didn't even start until mid 2011.)

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  • Clearly, I haven't figured out the right way to use this feature, because my answer came 1 second after the question. May 23, 2012 at 4:31
  • Why not just monitor all self-answers (whether via checkbox or pre-compose)? May 23, 2012 at 4:36

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