Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33701
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Get to the point first. On most SE websites, the main flow of traffic is people coming from Google/DDG for quick answers. If there is code which solves the problem, make sure it's correctly formatted (e.g. using `code formatting` for code) because many people skip straight to it.

Details are appreciated, but only after making your point and giving (or proposing) the solution. It's an explanation for your point, not a story leading up to your point.

While writing 200 answers on various SE sites, I've also noticed that writing summarizing answers can be very helpful: when there are some answers which each mention part of the answer, or which are all inferior in some situations, it is appreciated to write up a single good answer. Usually those questions are old and upvotes will only trickle in over time, but it does seem to be appreciated by future visitors.

The writing here is often very impersonal: no "hi user249" or "thank you" needed; it's encyclopedic rather than a chat. Upvotes are how you say "thank you", because an upvote also implies a recommendation for others to read the answer (or question). But it's also not formal to the point of a scientific paper: you can say "I think" and "I did" rather than "one might assume" or "we performed".

Original score: 7