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I recently asked a soft question on MSE that garnered a variety of informative answers. After reading through the answers, as well as discovering some information from answers to other questions, I wrote up an answer that included what I felt to be the most pertinent excerpts from other answers. However, I have a few questions now:

  • Should I include links to the profiles of the users I cite, in addition to the links to their answers (which I already included)?
  • Should I mark my answer as community wiki? (this suggestion was brought up in the comments and answers to the meta question, http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/q/20972/111520)
  • Should I mark my answer as accepted, bumping it to the top?
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    $\begingroup$ My opinions: links to answers suffice (but if they're all on the same page, why bother with links – just mention which answers you found helpful). Community Wiki is up to you. Yes, do accept your answer. $\endgroup$
    – Gerry Myerson
    May 20, 2016 at 7:06
  • $\begingroup$ @GerryMyerson I made the answer community wiki and accepted it, but it didn't stick to the top since I wrote it. So I unaccepted it, because not sticking to the top kind of defeated the purpose of accepting, but hopefully people will see it if they decide to scroll through the answers. $\endgroup$
    – justin
    May 20, 2016 at 21:44
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    $\begingroup$ It might serve the purpose of highlighting your answer-as-summary simply to mention it in the body of the Question. $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    May 23, 2016 at 13:52
  • $\begingroup$ @hardmath Thank you for suggesting that; I actually also thought of that a few days ago and implemented it! $\endgroup$
    – justin
    May 23, 2016 at 15:55
  • $\begingroup$ Why are self-answers able to give one reputation points in the first place? $\endgroup$
    – ahorn
    May 23, 2016 at 18:00

1 Answer 1

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  1. On MSE, it is recommended to accept answers (even your own), in order to mark questions as "solved" (and close them).

  2. When you accept your own answer, you don't get the usual 15 reputation points. You get up- or down-votes, though.

  3. Currently, your own answer is the one with the recent activity; if I choose to rank answers according to activity (it's a tab under the comments section below your question, at the right of the page), yours shows up at the top. (This will change, of course, if further answers will be posted, or if any of the answers already given gets edited.)

In any case, if you feel that none of the given answers fully addresses your own question, but that the one that you have compiled does, it is perfectly fine (and I encourage you) to accept your own; nobody will have hard feelings.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the advice. I think your last sentence gives a pretty solid criterion for whether or not to accept one's own answer. And just a quick note regarding your first point—Asaf Karagila mentions here that actually "Questions with upvoted answers do not appear on the 'Unanswered' list." $\endgroup$
    – justin
    May 23, 2016 at 16:02

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