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Comment by mrich | Hacker News Reader

Not to hate on the great top-voted answer, but isn't it a bit strange that it was posted a mere five minutes after the question?

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Not really, a very common pattern on SO is to jump on a question to which you know you have a good answer, put something very short (but correct) and then edit in a better, longer response. This avoids "losing" initial votes from people looking at responses while you're fleshing out the description, adding benchmarks, etc...

It's definitely gaming the system, but it's not really suspicious (in the sense of "guy asks a question and immediately puts a response he had pre-written in a text editor" suspicious)

The "suspicious" case you mention is explicitly supported by the system; you can actually write the question and answer at the same time if you want. The normal content rules still apply, of course; if the question isn't about an actual problem, you're more likely to win a bundle of downvotes.

I think without this ability to "game" the system SO wouldn't be half as good as it is now. You end up with brilliant and above all complete answers that can be kept up to date, and the moderation policy reduces duplication and clutter, keeping the SNR high.

Sure, some people might be motivated only by receiving high scores, but it seems that the benefits outweigh the potential for abuse

It's become common on stackexchange sites to post a brief answer immediately, follow by a much longer edit.

Doesn't matter. You can answer your own question immediately after posting it if you want. It's designed to be a collections of questions and answers, not a forum, and so it doesn't matter who answers what question.

Although Stackexchange puts in some mild game dynamics to make it a competition. At least for some, if you're into that kind of thing.

Game != competition. You get a few point for writing an accepted answer, but two good answers can both get up vote points from one reader.

There is only one best answer for every question, and badges, points, etc. tied to this. Whenever you have limited awards you have competition.

Stop splitting hairs.

Seems like the answer has been edited after lots of upvote to give a more detailed explanation.

I often do this. There is one answer which I've been quite literally editing for about three years. Every few months I add a bit more information or a few more references or links to it. Its become a kind of personal (but public) repository of information on the topic.

I hope you keep a backup of it yourself.

If you read the post author's comment on his own post, he went back and added all the explanation/analogy after making the initial post that just said it was down to branch prediction.

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