16
\$\begingroup\$

It came up in chat that one particular user seemed to be in the habit of:

  1. Posting a good question;

  2. Receiving good answers;

  3. Posting his/her refactored code as community answer, after adapting some things using advice from answers, sometimes with little to no explanation about what they did different and why.

  4. Subsequently accepting selfie answer.

  5. Getting good amount of down votes from community, effectively moving the post down beneath the good CR answer(s).

  6. Mod converts answer to Community Wiki answer as per site policy.

Example 1

Example 2

It's been said:

Malachi: that one should definitely have the checkmark moved to @vpn's answer, the user says that is what they used.


Mat'sMug: should they be deleted? or that would make us bullies?


RubberDucky: Posting a wiki answer "Here's what I ended up with" is fine, but accepting it? That's just rude.


janos: to me it's not about politeness at all "Click to accept this answer because it solved your problem or was the most helpful in finding your solution"


SimonAndréForsberg: would it be better to just leave the question unaccepted? What is the actual harm in making the self-accept?


rolfl: The bottom line is that it is not something that can be affected by us. The accept mark is intended for the OP to use as a special reward, and is totally at their discretion


I felt it would be good for this to at least be documented if it comes up more regularly.

\$\endgroup\$
2
  • \$\begingroup\$ Possibly relevant? A selfie answer of mine following the first three steps described. codereview.stackexchange.com/a/50936/37660 \$\endgroup\$
    – Vogel612
    Sep 29, 2014 at 22:02
  • \$\begingroup\$ All is good if you stop at step 3. It's a relevant example of a good selfie \$\endgroup\$
    – janos
    Sep 29, 2014 at 22:28

4 Answers 4

17
\$\begingroup\$

There's nothing wrong with self-answering a question. There isn't even anything wrong with accepting your own answer if you review your own code and provide new insight that others haven't.

The problem is when your selfie is not actually a review. If you just implemented the advices given in one or more other answers, that's not a review. As such, it's not an appropriate answer on this site. And if it's not an appropriate answer, then it certainly shouldn't be the coveted accepted answer, and you can expect it to get downvoted.

Take a moment to reconsider what the tooltip of the Accept button says:

Click to accept this answer because it solved your problem or was the most helpful in finding your solution

If you think none of the other answers qualify, then it's better to accept nothing than to accept your own inappropriate answer, even if you happen to like it.

Making bad selfies community wiki is just a strange move. There's no good way to deal with such posts, no clear cut reason to vote to delete. It's just strange. As such, they tend to get left alone, becoming blemish on the site. When a bad selfie is not a community wiki, it gets downvoted, which puts a pressure on the OP to correct the situation (hopefully not by making it a community wiki...)

\$\endgroup\$
2
  • \$\begingroup\$ Here would be one reason to delete such answers: What you can and cannot do after receiving answers: Code-only answers that don't actually review the code are insufficient and are subject to deletion. (that post also suggests making answers a community wiki if it mainly depends on other answers: a moderator determines that the self-answer is primarily dependent on other answers, then they are allowed to activate the CW status automatically) \$\endgroup\$
    – tim
    Sep 29, 2014 at 23:13
  • 5
    \$\begingroup\$ @tim I'm not 100% sure but deleting accepted answer is something more difficult than a regular answer. I know I've read some Stack Exchange meta post about it let me search a bit. \$\endgroup\$
    – Marc-Andre
    Sep 30, 2014 at 13:00
16
\$\begingroup\$

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing bad with self-answering a question. There isn't even anything wrong with accepting your own answer if you review your own code with distinct points not stated in other answers. The problem comes in when you only implement the advice given to you by other answers into your own answer and choose to accept that instead.

I personally think this sort of behavior is somewhat disrespectful to those who spent their time reviewing and improving the code. They deserve those 15 points for going the extra mile and giving some really great advice. The OP has nothing to gain out of accepting the answer, besides a little green tick next to their answer.

\$\endgroup\$
9
\$\begingroup\$

In this scenario I think that specific user actually misunderstood site policies, See the screenshot below.

If it really is a misunderstanding as he claims we should forgive him, If he follow site policies from now on, and do not repeat the same mistake again he was probably saying the truth.

I suggested the user to participate in the chat as well.

Screenshot

If I can at least guide one misguided new user to right path It would be a great accomplishment.

\$\endgroup\$
5
\$\begingroup\$

In recent discussions about Low Quality answers in the Low Quality Queue it was said that

a code dump is not a review, and therefore not an acceptable answer.

By Mat's Mug

Meaning that the answer should still be a review of the code originally posted code, if it is not a review then it is not a good answer.

If the selfie is a code dump, it is not a good reviewanswer

\$\endgroup\$

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .