Place answers into demilitarized zone instead of 5 minute grace period [duplicate]

Question

I'm going to piggy back off Make first draft of a new answer part of the permanent revision history but suggest that instead of having first drafts included in revision history, just change to a 5 minute demilitarized zone.

The way this would work is that any answers that have been submitted within 5 minutes of the question being asked can be answered, but won't be visible until that 5 minute period has expired. At this point, any submitted answers will be displayed and future changes become permanent revisions.

This will allow users the time to properly form their answer instead of competing for first answers. In addition, users will no longer be able to piggy back off other answers encouraging that each user form their own unique answer. Lastly, answers will be able to more fairly evaluated by the community.

The process would look something like:

1. User submits question
2. Community can begin submitting answers
3. 5 minutes after the user has submitted their question, any answers will be displayed and any future changes to these answers will be part of the revision history of the answer

Answer 1

Growing up, a good portion of my summer (and spring, and fall...) was spent helping out in my family's rather large garden.

Most of this involved rather tedious, repetitive labor. So to stave off boredom, we made up games to go along with it. "Fastest to finish hoeing a row of corn", "Most peas shelled in a minute", etc.

It helped. We got a lot more done, faster, and with less complaining because of it.

But... The games weren't really the goal, and no one ever thought otherwise: the point was the creation and preparation of food for the next year. If you "won" by chopping down all the corn or throwing out the unshelled peas, no one would think highly of you for doing so.

Too many people look at games - or especially "gamification" - as a silver bullet that will turn the efforts of lazy and unproductive players into gold... This is exceedingly naive. Any game played in bad faith will have disappointing results, whether the mechanics of that game involves throwing a ball around or answering programming questions.

Martijn wrote a great answer to a related question:

Stick around, look at the not-so-easy questions. Put in a little work. And once in a while, the fast gun-slingers miss the target, giving you a chance to post a better answer. And then the goal has been met, you helped out the OP and anyone looking for a solution to the same problem, with a great post.

(emphasis mine)

There will always be someone faster than you, someone smarter than you, someone more erudite than you. If your reaction to this is to demand that the playing field be leveled, you'll always be unhappy: for every handicap you add, someone will find a way to negate it via a talent they possess and you do not. The only winning move is not to play, so stop obsessing over your score in the game, and try to remember why it is being played at all.