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Possible Duplicate:
How can I link to an external resource in a community-friendly way?

I have the following situation and ask the community to help me. Recently, I faced with a problem and found a solution on my own. I wrote a post in my blog how to solve the problem. Yesterday I read a question that asked about the same problem. I answered just putting the link to my own blog post (with some text around). The answer was closed by a moderator.

What should I do? I can:

  1. I can reopen my answer (I do not want to do this because it's closed by a moderator).
  2. I can copy the whole answer from my blog (and can be blown that I'm a plagiator).
  3. I can put a link in the comments to my blog post (in this case the question will not have answer and I will not receive credits for the answer)
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    Answer can't be closed, it can only be deleted. Also please put link here so people can see what exactly you mean. – Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask Sep 24 '12 at 12:17
  • I can do this but I think that it will be not correct. So I'll improve my answer (it was deleted) and will write to a moderator what was done. – Yury Sep 24 '12 at 12:19
  • @UnicornifiedBobby Yep, this link clarifies a lot. But to my regret I did not find it before asking this question. – Yury Sep 24 '12 at 12:48
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If you have written your own blog post, you should surely be able to summarize it.

Narrow it down to the gist of the answer. Essentially the answer should be able to survive on its own, even if a link to your blog post would go down. If you manage to create an answer like that, then including a link to your blog for further details should be no problem at all.

Perhaps revise your answer in this way and once done, flag it for moderator attention explaining what you have done to correct the problem.

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Should your blog ever go away, your link only answer will become useless. The best thing to do is to answer your question in such a manner that it is useful for future visitors and provide a link to your blog for reference.

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    Agreed. If all you want to do is post a link to your blog post and not actually solve the problem in the answer, such a link should be a comment, not an answer. – Aaron Bertrand Sep 24 '12 at 13:18
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Yesterday I read a question that asked about the same problem. I answered just putting the link to my own blog post

If the question was the same then you should have cast a close vote on it for being a duplicate of your question. This causes an auto-generated comment to be inserted with a link to your question, and if the question ultimately gets closed for that reason then a further link gets placed in the close reason.

Re-quoting your own blog post in full or part doesn't make you a plagiarist - it is your content that you are allowed to republish or summarize.

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  • No, I had faced with the same problem before (I did not find answer to this problem here) and I found a solution and wrote a blog post how to solve it. Yesterday I read that a guy faced with the same problem. – Yury Sep 24 '12 at 12:39
  • @Yury Exactly - his question was a duplicate of yours. Or was it? Did he ask his question first? If so they can still be linked. – slugster Sep 24 '12 at 13:02
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    No, I did not ask this question on SO and I could not find something similar. So I decided to solve problem on my own. I found a solution and published a blog post. That's all. – Yury Sep 24 '12 at 13:23

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