Is it considered bad form to 'steal' another's answer and incorporate it into your answer?

Question

I've noticed that people have taken other people's correct answers and edit-incorporated them into their own 'less correct' answers after the fact.

Is this considered bad form?

Answer 1

Avner nails it in his comment: so long as it's clearly stated to be supplementary material and acknowledges the other answer it seems OK.

There have been a couple of cases where I've got upvotes for such an answer (not the exact same scenario) and I've felt it necessary to add a comment requesting that the original be upvoted or accepted instead. That's obviously at each individual's discretion, but I think it's good etiquette.

Ultimately however upvotes and accepts are the prerogative of the person doing the upvoting or accepting and while you can request, you can't instruct. If somebody thinks your supplementary answer is better that's their decision to make, and likewise regarding accepts.

Answer 2

Depends on:

1. how much content is taken from another user and how much is your own;
2. Is the original answer on the same question or another one.

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For answering the same question:

While there are no rules, my own rule of thumb is that if I can't add more than 50% of content of my own, either:

• the existing answer should be edited, or...
• if my addition is pretty valuable in its own right, add as a "on a separate note" second answer, acknowledging the more complete answer's existence in my own but NOT re-using it.

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For answering a different question:

If an existing answer on another question answers most of the new question, the new question is a duplicate and should be closed as a dupe.

You should never answer a dupe with a copy of the existing answer. Instead, don't answer at all (preferred); OR, in rare cases when the question is not 100% duplicate, provide a brief answer addressing the (possibly) non-duplicate angles and linking to a full answer on another question.

Answer 3

Adding another answer here because I've just recently (in the previous 2 hours) fallen foul of this, or at least of something that looks on the surface a lot like it.

I'm not keen on the idea of calling out specific people here (the history is visible for those who are interested in looking for it anyway), so in summary the sequence of events looked like this:

• A question is asked.
• Another user supplies an answer (which seemed quite weak to me).
• I add an answer with quoted references from the source.
• The other user then goes back and edits their answer, incorporating my material as well as one of the same quotes into it.
• The other user then proceeds to - and I can't think of a charitable way to put this so I'll just be blunt instead and describe how it felt at the time - nitpick at my answer and discredit it.

Although there's nothing rules-wise to prevent this, and although the end result is that the other user's answer has been vastly improved by doing this, it still does seem quite an uncool thing to do.

Now, I could be reading this completely wrong, and perhaps it's just all a big coincidence. I'm more inclined to take the more negative reading, however, on account of the last item I listed above.

It's easy to give an emotionally detached response to this kind of thing until it actually happens to you, I guess.

Answer 4

Vaxquis' answer (here) annoyed me. Not only was his tone very confrontational when I suggested some edits but he's actually incorporated the picture that I edited (and the picture that JRG edited) into his own Franken-answer.

Admittedly he's credited us both, but I don't think that an answer which simply combines other people's answers should be rewarded quite so heavily.