For quite a while I have been asking myself what it is that makes us want to produce answers. Good answers. Sometimes answers that take a considerable amount of time to research, walk around with, come to a concept for. Subsequently we spend hours on working things out, testing, retrying, finetuning. A process that will possibly take hours or even days in complicated situations. You feel responsible for what you produced. You edit what you did if necessary.

Is anyone asking us to do that? No. We choose to do that. Should we get eternal honor and thanks for doing it? No. I'd like to have the community's thought however on the following situation:

Someone produced an answer as described above, posted it. After a few days of silence, suddenly a second answer pops up, posted by OP. An answer, fully based on the first answer. The concept, the prodedures, all of it. A few additions were done. Some are questionable, others concern stuff that wasn't in the question in the first place. That was what happened here.

In the discussion that followed it was suggested "that it was perfectly all right if OP posted his version of the answer and accepted it"

Really?

That might be true on an answer that consists of simply writing down what you know. For me it will never be true on something you created, spend time and thoughts on, just a few hours or days ago. An answer you are kind of proud of that you made work.

I'd seriously like to have the opinion of the community.

##EDIT

###For the record As mentioned in comments below, I want to stress that what happened on Raphael's question was the occasion to ask this question, not the subject. What I did with my answer to his question wasn't exactly balanced behavior, and also for the record: I shouldn't have done that. It was the result of being extremely tired and a few bad days.

That I didn't mention it has nothing to do with "not giving the rest of the picture", as @terdon puts it. I didn't mention it because it isn't the subject of this question.

I don't mind getting downvotes on a post on meta. If you disagree, you disagree. What itches me however is that I didn't aim for a discussion on Raphael's behavior, nor on mine, I aimed for a discussion on the statement. A discussion that has hardly been established.

i sincerely feel sad about that.