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Yesterday I asked this question and received two comments from user Richard which answer the question to my liking. Moreover, the comments answer the question better than the single submitted answer. I have asked the commenter to post an answer so I can accept it but he declined.

I have since done some more research based on the tip from the comments and found a few links to add to the information from the comments. My research didn't yield much (in this specific case, a confirmation of the comments at Wikipedia and a random forum post which also confirms the comments).

Should I post an answer as community wiki so I don't get credit for the commenter's work, post an answer as myself since I did additional research, or keep waiting for an additional answer (possibly downvoting the existing answer that I don't think is good)?

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  1. What you did was pretty much in full accordance with etiquette (not that it's codified, but it's what I try to adhere to).

    • Encourage the commenter to produce an answer.
    • If they explicitly deny, add some info of your own, and post an answer including a hat-tip to original commenter.

  2. BTW, from personal POV, I have definitely done that before (added comments when I had useful answer-leading info but either didn't have enough info to make it into an answer I was happy with, or didn't have time to bother writing up the answer). From that perspective, I can definitely state that I viewed it very positively when people took those comments and based answers on them (especially if they followed both points of etiquette outlined above).

  3. Do not bother with Community Wiki. You write an answer and that's an effort worth the rep gain.

    The main point of CW is to allow people to edit extensively-community-collaborated answers, which isn't even an issue anymore due to the Edit Suggestion feature for low-rep users. So CW is not very useful.

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    The sole reason I've ever used CW is when reposting someone else's (old) comment as an answer. And that's only because of my semi-OCD about leaving questions "unanswered" when there's a perfectly good answer sitting there.
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 20, 2014 at 15:53
  • @Richard: I've used Community Wiki that way myself. Seemed to have often happened where someone answered their own question in the comments.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Sep 25, 2014 at 15:49
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Absolutely you can. Posting your own answer is positively encouraged. On top of that, you've apparently done some original research which you can use to supplement the info I put into the comments. You may wish to add an acknowledgement if you use some info from a comment out of pure courtesy.

For the record, the only good reasons for posting something like this as a "community wiki" would be where you've literally done no work whatsoever and simply wish to identify that an answer exists.

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  • Okay, thanks. I had recently seen a similar question on Mathematics Meta so I was wondering if the sci fi community had a different policy. If my research had yielded something more definitive (I was hoping for a video or screenshot of Agent Brown or Jones in The Matrix Online) I would have simply answered it myself, but the sources I found aren't great so I don't think I'm adding much. But it's still better than the existing "answer".
    – Null Mod
    Commented Sep 19, 2014 at 20:53

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