Two Answers the Same: one downvoted, the other upvoted/accepted

Question

Riddle me this: WooThemes PremiumNews Theme jQuery Conflict with WordPress 3.2

I posted an answer to this question; half an hour later, someone else posts the same answer. Mine is down-voted; the latter question is both up-voted, and accepted.

Now, I certainly don't mind being down-voted (I actually expected it might happen on this particular question). What I don't understand is the inconsistent treatment of the two answers.

Also, this is another example of when an essentially identical answer has been posted to the same question. I thought the normal procedure is to edit/update the original answer, rather than to duplicate it with slightly different/additional information? I just want to make sure I'm doing things right; there have been a few times where I've commented another answer to provide additional information, or else offered up an edit to another answer, rather than post a new answer with that same information.

Answer 1

First, the one who downvoted you might not have been person who asked question or same person who upvoted alternate answer. So it is hard to formulate this as inconsistent treatment because voting and accepting here might have had anywhere between one to three parties involved.

I do not agree that alternate answer is identical:

• your answer, while suggesting valid solution, has no explanation or reasoning why the issue is best solved that way;

• alternate answer highlights the issue first, then names theme as likely point of failure and only then refers to the support.

Valid solution alone is not always best possible answer (especially if it's easy to interpret as get lost and go ask elsewhere). The explanation of what is happening is also very valuable both to person asking and others.

There are no precise rules for handling similar answers. It can be a comment. It can be an edit. It can be separate answer. This choice is individual and not closely governed by site's rules.

As for me no one at wrong here.

Answer 2

Welcome to the messy world of humans.

Answer 3

Chip,

I was writing my answer to that question at the same time you were. I got the notice that a new answer had been posted right before I hit submit. Even though our answers were almost the same I went ahead and submitted mine anyway because I spent 15 to 20 minutes debugging the javascript on the site as well as the Woo Themes demo which had the same problem.