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Truth and helpfulness versus user's wishes on use of publicly posted information.

Hi, long story, but someone answered my question I thought was a duplicate (and had stated so), but turns out not to be. And so they deleted their post. But it is the a correct solution for another answer (which actually has a factually incorrect answer marked as accepted).

I asked the user to post it as the correct answer on the other question. They declined.

Question: is the utility and value of a correct answer more important than the wishes of not reposting what I believe is perfectly legal public information?

Thanks

EDIT1: The answer is correct for another question. My question is, should I post to it to help that other person. ..I do care about the users wishes, but I believe helping another person with a valid question is more important. Its a value judgement. And I am asking the community before taking any action, unlike this user who changed the title of my post to something not helpful. ..Personally, I think it is ironic this user is okay with editing another users title to a question that fit his answer, but not me posting his answer where it should go if he wont.

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Since it is me who answered and deleted the answer on this question, a few words from me. Let's look at what happened:

  1. I read a question (yours) saying "this is definitely a duplicate of , but the answer there is incorrect."
  2. Since your question was full of noise, and when removing the noise, not much of a question was left, I looked at the dupe. Then I made an exception to my own rule to never answer an unclear question, however:
  3. I thought I understood what you tried to achieve, making a combination of the linked question and yours, answered the question and edited the title to reflect what I assumed you meant to ask.
  4. Then you commented on the answer, making clear that you had no understanding on the concept of the answer whatsoever, nor its code, you changed the title of your question. While in the beginning you mentioned "this is definitely a dupe of..", then again you decided it wasn't.
  5. If it wasn't already, the question turned into a mess. I decided the question/answer combination made no sense and wasn't useful on the site.

That is where my story with you ends.

To my astonishment however, you announced you would post my answer as an answer to another question if I wouldn't. Apart from the fact that I am pretty sure it is legally incorrect, it is utterly disrespectful.

Whether I should or could post the answer somewhere else is up to me. Not to someone who isn't even capable of explaining (nor understanding the real issue in) his own question. Even if you were the most brilliant coder on the site however: you cannot post someone else’s answer.

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  • Actually I think it would be legally correct to repost your answer, as long as the necessary attribution is given, i.e. it is stated that you were the original author. All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 anyway. Whether it would be morally okay or disrespectful is a different question, and if the answer is technically correct and useful in that place yet another though.
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Apr 23, 2020 at 12:24
  • @ByteCommander Oli usually is the one who knows the details on this. I seem to remember you cannot post someone else's answer without permission, apart from the weird situation we'd get. I seem to remember Oli described it in an answer some time ago. need to plough through his answers on meta. Apr 23, 2020 at 13:36
  • dude, why are you being so weird about this, it would help someone.. ?
    – alchemy
    Apr 24, 2020 at 2:53
  • @alchemy If my arguments above are not enough for you already, this is just another one: my answer is not an answer to the linked question. You would know if you would understand the linked question and my answer. You simply don't, and you are trying to make an invalid point. Apr 24, 2020 at 15:19

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