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I've just learnt the existence of a certain behavior from this post:

  • OP asks a question

  • He gets help from an user

  • He tell him it doesn't work as-is

  • With the help of this user only (again), he get it to work

  • OP answers his own question and leave the altruist user behind

I think it's clearly a lack of respect, the altruist user (moreover beginner on Stack Overflow) must feel abused and have no sign of recognition at all.

I was about to downvote OP's answer and explain him that the other user's answer deserved to be accepted, but on the other hand, it's good that the OP feels that he have to share how he resolved his problem for future visitors.

So, I thought I should share it here before.

What is the appropriate move here?

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3
  • 9
    Upvote the other answer?
    – OGHaza
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:32
  • 1
    @OGHaza Already did :)
    – Maen
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:33
  • 2
    FWIW the meta effect has credited that guy with an extra 70 rep so I'd say it worked out pretty well for all parties involved :P
    – OGHaza
    Apr 12, 2014 at 0:23

2 Answers 2

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13

There's really nothing wrong with this. The author of the first answer didn't edit the changes into his own answer, so I think it's perfectly within reason for the OP to post their own answer with a working example.

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19
  • So, the other user's guilty? The whole solution is his though?
    – Maen
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:35
  • 6
    @Bigood What would you have the OP do? Leave critical information in the comments? We want complete answers. If the first answerer doesn't edit his post, it's fine for someone else to post a complete, working example.
    – Bill the Lizard
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:41
  • @Bigood Read the license before complaining.
    – devnull
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:41
  • @devnull I'm aware of the licence. It's just the lack of gratefulness I'm pointing out, not the use of other's posted code. And I'm not complaining, just try to make everybody feeling comfortable with fairness at my own scale.
    – Maen
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:45
  • @Bigood It seems that you are new to the site. Once you've been around for a while, you'll observe this in various forms. It's probably not worth giving a thought.
    – devnull
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:47
  • 2
    @Bigood: How do you know that the OP wasn't grateful? Rodrigo's answer has 4 votes - are you assuming that none of them is from the OP?
    – Jon Skeet
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:49
  • 1
    @JonSkeet Chances are that more than half of those are because of the meta-effect.
    – devnull
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:50
  • 4
    @JonSkeet He doesn't have enough rep to vote up!
    – Maen
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:50
  • Alright Bill, I'll consider your advice for next time.
    – Maen
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:52
  • 8
    @Bigood I might be jaded, but as far as "ungratefulness" goes, this seems rather mild and passive. At least the newb didn't flag his question with "I got my answer, you can delete this now." :)
    – Bill the Lizard
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:53
  • @Bigood: I thought you could always upvote answers to your own question, even if you didn't have enough rep to upvote on other questions. I could be wrong though.
    – Jon Skeet
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:54
  • Sure, it could have been worse. I might have put too much of myself in this...
    – Maen
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:55
  • @JonSkeet Ah, I'm in doubt now, I've never been in this case (you neither I guess =])
    – Maen
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:56
  • 3
    You can comment on any answer attached to your own questions, @JonSkeet, but upvoting requires 15 rep regardless of question owner; there ought to be at least a little challenge in the game of sock puppetry!
    – jscs
    Apr 11, 2014 at 18:58
  • @JoshCaswell: Ah, right - apologies.
    – Jon Skeet
    Apr 11, 2014 at 19:01
0

They can do this as long as the attribute any sources they used to create their answer. i.e. If their answer uses portions of the previous answer written by another user, they should state so explicitly and include a link to that user's profile page. Contributions here on Stack Exchange are licensed under CC-BY-SA.

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