Rep-requirement for Answering Own Question [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Limiting Self-Answers

It appears to be a common mistake of the new-user to treat Stack Overflow as if it were a forum, posting the initial question, and then adding follow-up posts below as "answers." To my knowledge, I've not seen this amongst more seasoned users, which makes me wonder if a user should have to meet a particular rep-requirement before being permitted to "answer" his/her own question.

While it's true that the user may have the genuine capacity to answer their own questions properly, it seems safer to require the rep, just as sufficient rep is required for doing many other things new users may genuinely have the capacity to do, downvote, edit, etc.

It is my sincere opinion that this would cut down on innapropriate noise in the provided answers.

Answer 1

A tempting proposal

On the one hand, this is very appealing - those answers are annoying. Of course, so are non-answer answers posted by such users on questions they don't own, which is at least as common and something this will do nothing about.

On the other hand, this locks new users out of a valid and accepted means of using the site. It breaks a SO feature for these users simply because other users have misused it. As Pollyanna also notes, SO already tries to discourage users from answering their own questions, suggesting the use of comments instead - of course, some ignore this...

Proof of the problem?

It would be nice to see some evidence that this solution has at least a chance at working; some data as to which rep levels have the highest occurrence of self-answering would go a long way toward demonstrating the scope of the problem and provide a good tool for choosing the right rep-level for the cutoff (my gut feeling is that even 100 points is unnecessarily high).

Encouraging desired behavior

Normally on SO, comments are intentionally discouraged in favor of posting answers: when viewing questions from other users, a SO user will see a great big big "Your Answer" entry field and only tiny gray "add comment" links. And new users don't see the "add comment" links at all on answers to questions they don't own...

So perhaps a better solution to self-answer non-answers might be to similarly encourage new users to post comments on the answers to their own questions by showing the comment entry fields instead of tiny gray links, while keeping the self-answer entry field hidden:

Answer 2

No, we already have an information box that asks if they're sure they want to add and answer, and suggests that they edit the question if they have more information on the question.

Note:

1. The standard answer editor does NOT appear by default for post owners. Instead there is a single "Answer Your Question" button.

2. Clicking the "Answer Your Question" button nags you:

   Are you sure you want to answer your own question? If you're responding to answers left on your question, use the comments link under each answer

Quite frankly, I'd like to encourage new users to answer their own questions when they've solved their problem, if no other answer is appropriate.

Locking them out of a basic feature of the site will only result in more questions edited with "Solved: I did x, y, and z" and them never accepting another answer.

Answer 3

Personally, I've asked many and answered many of my own questions. I asked initially looking for a quick response, but then as I awaiting the response either had one of those coming to the code moments or a colleague was able to help out (or google...).

Adding the answer at that time not only shows the correct way to resolve the issue, but also prevents folks from wasting time. I'm concerned that not allowing the answer will actually keep the noise high as people try to answer questions that folks are really no longer needing an answer to.

We will then see even a larger number of questions here on meta about acceptance rates like they actually are worthy of discussing on meta in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I understand the sentiment, but the unintended consequences will probably be a larger issue...

Answer 4

I agree, great idea.

I'd propose 100 rep, this would give them time to figure the site mechanics out.

Answer 5

This conflicts a little with the answers of Should I answer my own question, or not?

I think it would be better to just show an advice to users with less than a given amount of rep if they try to post an answer to they questions.
Maybe the advice should be presented for the first 3 answers, regardless which question. I've seen a couple of "follow-up posts" this weeks, like "Thank's, that helped at lot" or "Just what I was looking for".

EDIT:
as I just learned, the warning is already there :--)

Answer 6

Agree. Suggest rep of 300 required to demonstrate that user has sufficient understanding of SO to answer own question.

My thinking is that it is unlikely that user will obtain rep of 300 on the same day as they join. -- if they do achieve such a feat then perhaps they ought to get a badge as well...

Answer 7

I think the problem behaviour comes from the number of forums out there that use the answer section as a discussion. The MSDN forums do it this way, for example.

So the asker replies to an answer by posting another answer, and the discussion goes down the page, and then disrupted by an upvote, and so on.

When the asker actually discovers the answer themselves and posts the answer, that's not really a problem. So perhaps people with sufficient reputation should be able to move an answer from being an answer into being a comment on a different answer, or being able to move an answer into the question itself?