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. What we post on the site is part of the site. 

That doesn't mean you don't feel attached to what you produced however. imagine 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 procedures, 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][1].

---

> To show both sides of the coin: my response wasn't "the most balanced", so to speak. I mentioned him that my answer was *an answer to the question he asked*, and that his additions were mostly about additional stuff, not mentioned in the question. I also mentioned that some of the procedures he used in his version of the answer weren't advisable, for reasons I explained to him. Furthermore, I suggested that accepting my answer would be a decent action, since his answer was fully based on it. 

> Long story short: he posted a question on meta:

> ##Answerer pushes me to accept then self-deletes

...after which I got pissed, deleted my answer. The full discussion is to be found [here][2]

In my defense, I was extremely tired and had a few bad days behind me. For the record, Re-reading the story, I can perfectly understand his point of view, and don't have an issue with Raphael whatsoever, ***but***:

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###Back to the subject of the question

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"* (see the link above).

***Really?***

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. An answer you feel *connected* to. 

That was what made you produce it in the first place.


  [1]: http://askubuntu.com/questions/862957/block-unity-keyboard-shortcuts-when-a-certain-application-is-active/863003#863003
  [2]: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/50540/discussion-between-raphael-and-jacob-vlijm