Edits that combine answers

Question

Today I came across a few edits that try to combine parts from two different answers into one by editing information from answer two into answer one.

This is done by a third party and not the original posters of answer one or two.

How should I handle this ?

It seems to me very inappropriate as it takes from one answer and bolsters another, which is of course taking away from answer two.

Here is an example from today where the user "tom" took information from the answer by "Steve Saporta" and pasted it into the answer by "oli"

Should I accept an edit like this ?

Answer 1

If one of the answers is not an answer at all, then editing information from it into another answer (with appropriate attribution) is sometimes okay.

In particular, if the same author posts two answers but really intended to post one answer, and one of the two answers is intended as an edit or comment on the other, then editing information from the non-answer into the actual answer is appropriate.

In either of those cases, one should flag the answer that doesn't really attempt to answer the question on its own as not an answer.

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Besides that, what you've described sounds bad. But you haven't given any specific examples here and I can think of ways to construe a perfectly reasonable situation as "combining answers."

For example, suppose one answer is posted, which contains a wrong part. This motivates someone else to post their own answer. A third person comes along later and fixes the wrong part in the original answer by editing it. If this conflicts with the clearly expressed intent of that answer's author, then it should be avoided (and the author could roll back such an edit). Other than that, though, what the editor did was fine--not just fine, but actively good.

If an edit to one answer would be appropriate in the absence of other answers, it is often appropriate in the presence of other answers as well.

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Based on what you've described, I think there might be many combinations of factors that could militate toward or against the edits you've seen being appropriate. For anyone to give specific, reliable advice, more information is needed. I recommend doing one of the following:

• Edit this meta question to provide information about the specific case.
• If for some reason you don't want to publicly talk about the specific situation, and you do believe something bad is happening, flag one of the affected posts with a custom moderator attention flag and explain the situation.

Answer 2

I just saw the suggested edit.
It was rejected by the community 2-1 and I agree with that decision.

I also agree with Eliah, but I'll add notes specific to the case:

• My answer wasn't so long that somebody might not notice the second. That's one of the few cases where summarising other answers into a header answer might be acceptable... But there was simply no need here.
• Proper attribution wasn't made.
• Perhaps most importantly, it's a different answer. Streamlining an existing top answer using later answers' techniques might be appropriate, but this is adding an alternative technique. Again, no need for any of that here, that's exactly why we can post multiple answers.