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Comment by tedmiston | Hacker News Reader

We have an edit button though! And edits are community validated before being merged. I use it regularly to update other people's answers. If the update breaks backwards compatibility, I'll just add a separate section "For Python 3.x, use .items() instead of .iteritems()" etc.

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Very true but I think SE does a poor job incentivizing upkeep. Its very little Karma compared to new contributions. Honestly the only thing I with they would change.

I agree, and would like to see a change like that in Q&A, but it would be a pretty big deal at this point in the site's life. However, the new Documentation section does a much better job with this. Each edit is worth +2, and upvotes give points to all significant contributors (+5 or +1 depending on size of contribution), not just the author!

This system has had some issues and may still be adjusted, but I think it's a lot closer to the mark. I've probably gained close to 1000 rep so far from documentation I contributed to but did not author.

> and upvotes give points to all significant contributors (+5 or +1 depending on size of contribution), not just the author

That's interesting. I wasn't aware of the trickle down karma like that.

Keep in mind that's for [Documentation][1], not Q&A (which is what most people think of when they think of StackOverflow).

[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/documentation

Ahh, whoops, you're right about doc karma [1].

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/help/whats-reputation

This is fair. I think it's +2 for an accepted edit vs +10*n upvotes +15 for accepted. Another approach is to just make a new answer on the original question later. I see that a lot for Python 2/3 stuff too.

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