How many times should an answer be allowed to be edited?

Question

A question was recently asked, and then answered.

The orignal answer given was not quite right, and so the answerer went and edited for clarification. During the next several hours, other answers were given from other members. The original answerer has then gone and made additional edits - some of which included the answers from other members. At last count, there were 7 additional edits to the original answer, some of which clearly were intended to expand using comments/answers from other members.

Coincidentally, all the other answers have been given a down-vote.

I'm not suggesting any of this is wrong per-se - just leaves a little sour taste in my mouth. Is there any guidance on this?

Answer 1

The number of edits is pretty much irrelevant I think, but sniping information that's already valid in others' answers is questionable, unless some significant expansion, clarification, or even refutation is being made. (And the fact everybody else has a single downvote definitely smells off.) Even then I'd tend to work in a back-reference, eg. "[Other user] said [whatever] but also look at..." Minor corrections should probably just be done in-line with the original answer; that's what the edit links are there for.

But also consider this from a less suspicious perspective, though: maybe this sort of behavior comes about from people attaching too much ownership to answers, both theirs and others'. The SE system combining a point system(my answer, my points) with wiki-ish edit links(everybody working toward one great answer) does create a bit of a conflict.

Answer 2

When you see someone doing something you do not approve of, please let them know in the most civil fashion possible - e.g. "-1 this answer was already provided at (time) by (user)"

The example Su' provided would be an opportunity to downvote and comment on the latecomer's answer if the latecomer has not added any material information (though, in the example Su' provided, the addition of the Twitter link makes things less clear) - if the latecomer cannot improve upon the answer, it's fairly obvious what is going on (and I would expect other voters to take note, as well).

Looking at the first linked question, it seems fairly obvious who was responsible for the downvotes on answers (check asker's reputation history).

Answer 3

If you suspect that someone is downvoting all the answers that compete with their own, I'd suggest just going and upvoting those downvoted answers. The net result will then be that:

• the answers will have the same score as if neither votes had happened,
• the users who posted them will each have gained +8 rep, and
• the user who downvoted them will have lost 1 rep per vote.

In fact, simply upvoting any answers that you feel have been unfairly downvoted (and not upvoting answers that you feel are overrated) is a good approach in general. The StackExchange rep system is pretty good at ensuring that irresponsible downvoting will just backfire on the downvoter, at least as soon as someone else notices it.