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The following just happened:

@nixeagle was writing an answer to this question, while the inquirer found out how to do it by himself, and began editing his question.

I was waiting for nixeagle's answer to be posted, and refreshing the page. I saw both the edit and the answer appear at once, containing the same information. What a coincidence.

What should be done in such a (albeit rare) case? Should the inquirer remove his/her edit and post it as an answer?

Note that there had been 16 minutes between the original question and its edit.

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A lot of newbies are bound to have the same question; I didn't know the answer either. Accepting an answer isn't mandatory, but this one is such an easy one that I can't help but think the inquirer should post his edit as an answer, and accept one of the provided ones, even if it's his. – CHM Mar 25 '12 at 4:01

1 Answer

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Umm... nothing? Users are encouraged to attempt to solve their own question and update their question as they learn more. In this case, it was an update saying that he understood why it happened, but it still didn't help him in different cases. I don't see any reason to do anything here :)

If they do find a full solution, then they're by all means welcome to post that as an answer. In such cases, it is often a good idea (if only to be courteous to your peers), to wait a bit to see if anyone else has an answer before posting yours. You might be surprised to see that there might actually be a better approach. However, we should also be cautious and not let users make this a habit and allow them to post a question on every little thing they figured out and answer it :)

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I'm not denying that he has the right to answer his own question. But since your answer was accepted, the inquirer obviously now understands how to solve the problem - why also explain that in the question? I've got no problem with someone providing an answer to his own question when pertinent, I actually think that's what should be done in this case, instead of an edit. – CHM Mar 25 '12 at 4:55
I don't think it, by itself, has merit to be an answer, since it's only a part of his question. They did have a confusion re: why it failed in other cases. In any case, I wouldn't rush to post more answers. One needs to look at 1) does the answer that you propose he post answer the question as it stands 2) are there other answers that answer it. You could say that since the edit makes our answers seem redundant, the edit could be rolled back since it was made after our answers. Perhaps that's something to suggest to the OP and see if he's up for it :) – rm -rf♦ Mar 25 '12 at 5:47

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