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Often questions are very easy to answer if the asker would search a few minutes in the internet and has the right search terms handy.

The latter one is the key, the askers often didn't know what to search for to find the right answers which often already exists many times.

Regarding to this question I want to know the all day policy here. I dont favor to copy tutorials already available in the net but post the link with some hints. Furthermore, I don't explain each mousemove and fingertip for the right approach but try to give a usefull script to implement the solution.

In the question above I already answered the solution and without any intention of the asker a power user did it again, more than half an hour later, targeting megadummies.

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    I think the answer you link is quite bad, you explain as if the OP already know what they are doing and understands the terminology but they clearly don't. I don't even see how you can compare that answer to the one by Kos, his has so much more detail, I considered closing yours as link only it lacks so much information. Also I think calling inexperienced users "megadummies" is very rude, not knowing something does not make you dumb. If you don't like these inexperienced user you are on the wrong site. Your answers should always aim to help ANYONE that comes across them.
    – Mark Kirby
    Mar 16, 2016 at 7:56
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    I've deleted my answer since Jacob Vlijm's answer below said the same way better than I did. The only thing left unaddressed being: since you recognize yourself that the question was "easy", it's likely that whoever's asking would be tech-illiterate enough to grasp the hard terminology and reduce it to a series of pratical steps, making the answer relatively useful if not useful at all.
    – kos
    Mar 16, 2016 at 11:01
  • There is now a 3rd very extensive answer posted which cost a lot of effort. Now, next I am expecting a video tutorial . What I want to say: Such effort would be more useful at some unanswered questions but on this one which is already well solved.
    – cmks
    Mar 16, 2016 at 16:18
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    Please also note that link-only answers are discouraged network-wide and will be flagged for removal.
    – Takkat
    Mar 16, 2016 at 16:35
  • @cmks: Please do note though that when I started writing my answer I did not see any other answers and due to some problems I am experiencing I do not get updates unless I refresh the page so it was only when I finished writing my answer and submitted it that I saw the others. I then deleted my answer because there was another good one there, but decided the next day to undelete mine and improve it.
    – user364819
    Mar 17, 2016 at 12:35
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    I agree "link only" answers are poor quality and there is no way guarantee the off site link will remain in place as domains come and go. leave the link in a comment, copy the RELEVANT section with attribution and the link for additional information., or write your own answer. If the answer is "too long"perhaps the question is too broad and the OP need to ask a more specific question.
    – Panther
    Mar 17, 2016 at 12:50
  • Your question is pretty low-quality. People ask on this site because they don't know how to do what they want to do. You can't answer questions assuming the OP knows what they're doing, because they probably don't. Your answer has no formatting (just a bunch of dashes, all on one line), and you don't seem to really even bother with full sentences. It makes the question on top of it being somewhat unclear as to what is supposed to be done. Mar 17, 2016 at 23:24

2 Answers 2

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I am a mega dummy

To be honest, reading your answer, not being very familiar with VirtualBox, I would have to scratch my head a few times, translate the cryptic (indeed cli- jargon -like) instruction into human readable text, open VirtualBox to find out what you are exactly referring to, click the link for additional information, try to find the appropriate information on the page....

Even for me, using VirtualBox a lot, the line:

"...disk-image-manager, assign the ISO-image to the virtual CD drive of the VM and configure the boot-order of the VM"

takes quite some effort to picture what to do exactly.

Posting an additional answer?

In the past, I practiced the rule that I would never post an additional answer if an existing answer was based on the same concept as what I had in mind. The result was that It sometimes took considerably more time to edit/improve an existing answer, than answering the question from scratch.
I stopped doing that.

I therefore post an additional answer nevertheless, if:

  • the existing answer is hardly fixable into a good answer without rewriting it

and/or:

  • I have useful additional information, which comes together with the existing answer

In this case, if your answer even wasn't clear enough to be recognized by kos (and to be honest, by me), I suggest you reconsider the concept of how to answer questions.

I am pretty sure kos posted his answer, not knowing it was based on the same procedure as your answer. Even if he would have, I see good reasons to post an elaborated, additional answer however.

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While yours wasn't a link only answer, the more checkbox style answers will tend to get votes/accepts.

If you rifle through some of my low-vote answers, I'm sure you'll find the same thing all over the place.

Generally, more in depth/manual like answers get more points.

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