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I'm pretty new to SO (48 days into it) and I enjoy reading/contributing quite a bit. I ran into one issue today that I found frustrating...

I posted an answer to a simple question today. At (almost) exactly the same time, another, incorrect answer was posted. Much to my surprise, the incorrect answer began receiving up-votes! I quickly (and respectfully) pointed out to the poster that their answer was incorrect. Forty minutes later, they edited their response, copied my answer and began receiving more up-votes.

Question:

Is this a generally accepted practice? If not, Is this a "flag worthy" issue?

Disclaimer:

I understand that this is not a huge issue. I'm just attempting to learn proper SO etiquette. Personally, I would have deleted the incorrect post after that period of time, instead of editing it.

EDIT

Link, as requested: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6599818/google-maps-hello-world-problem/6599886#6599886

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    This has been discussed before, although I don't have a good link handy. The general consensus seems to be "We empathize; it totally sucks that someone stole 'your' rep. Ultimately, the important thing is that the right info is out there. Be the better person and just find a new question to answer."
    – Pops
    Jul 6, 2011 at 20:02
  • Related: to this
    – M. Tibbits
    Jul 6, 2011 at 20:15
  • possible duplicate of An elegant solution for "answer-stealing" edits?
    – Lance Roberts
    Jul 6, 2011 at 22:19
  • So what happened? The linked-to question got removed completely. So maybe we should now close this Q as duplicate (see link reference provided by M.Tibbits in an earlier comment).
    – cfi
    Jul 2, 2012 at 8:06

1 Answer 1

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It happens, unfortunately. I don't think it's "flag-worthy", but it's very certainly rude on the part of the person who does that to you. It's happened to me before, and they certainly get a downvote from me for etiquette breach, even when the answer is right. My best advice is to walk away and let it be; otherwise, there almost certainly will be a flamewar in comments, which is never pretty.

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    +1 Post in question has a bit of flamewar in comments...
    – M. Tibbits
    Jul 6, 2011 at 20:20

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