I came across this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22570596/secure-login-register-system-with-email-validation

and a fairly experienced user (2 years+ on SO) has posted an answer that is three scripts and instead of including them in one answer has posted three separate answers.
I've commented that they would be better and less confusing if they were all put into one answer but thought I'd best check here first.

I've looked at What is the official etiquette on answering a question twice? .

Which kind of answers the question, but from a more experienced user's point of view I'd like to know what they would do in this particular circumstance?

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The question itself is far to broad to start with. –  Lix Mar 26 '14 at 8:34
    
Question is too broad and 3 answers are, well, not answers at all. They are all copy-pasted content and without any comment line, it is nearly impossible to understand what most lines are doing. A total mess IMO. –  FallenAngel Mar 26 '14 at 9:17
    
@rene, looks like 4 people have downvoted all the answers - last time I downvoted 3 answers from a user they were serial reversed :( –  OGHaza Mar 26 '14 at 9:27
    
@RichardTingle I actually mention that link in my question, I wanted a viewpoint on this specific case though. However the title has been changed to be so generic now and can understand you raising it as a duplicate. –  Lankymart Mar 26 '14 at 9:56
    
My personal preference is for a specific answer + closed as duplicate as the best of both worlds. But if you object strongly I can retract my vote –  Richard Tingle Mar 26 '14 at 9:58
    
In a more general sense, there are some good examples of where this would be (arguably) appropriate. –  Qix Oct 24 '14 at 0:47

1 Answer 1

up vote 20 down vote accepted

That's definitely not appropriate. The only situation where posting multiple answers to the same question may be appropriate is when each of the answers, on its own, could be a valid and complete answer to the question.

In this case, it appears that the answerer simply split his long answer into three parts. The second and third parts should be edited into the first one, and then flagged for deletion.

Edit: It looks like the reason they did that is because the combined answer would exceed the 30,000 character length limit. IMO, that's still not, in itself, a sufficient reason to split an answer — it simply indicates that the answer you're trying to post is way too long for SO. It does, however, somewhat complicate dealing with this particular situation, except perhaps by simply deleting it all.

(On a closer look, the answer(s) is full of pretty awful copy-paste spaghetti code, anyway, and the question itself is indeed way too broad. I'd recommend closing and deleting the whole mess.)

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I didn't feel right commenting on the code, but assumed maybe it's something they have used themselves and in an effort to be helpful posted their entire solution. Personally don't find that useful especially if the OP isn't experienced. –  Lankymart Mar 26 '14 at 9:22
    
Exceeding 30k chars is a good reason. Else, how could you describe how SSL works? –  CodesInChaos Mar 26 '14 at 9:50
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@CodesInChaos, if exceeding 30k characters is a good reason to split an answer, why is there a limit? Clearly a limit tells you that answers should not exceed 30k characters. Fully agree with Ilmari that "it simply indicates that the answer you're trying to post is way too long for SO" –  OGHaza Mar 26 '14 at 10:27
    
@CodesInChaos I imagine you can explain how SSL works by pasting in an xkcd explanation... but I cannot prove that with an example :) –  mah Apr 21 '14 at 13:53
    
@CodesInChaos: Ever seen this close reason: "too broad There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs." –  Ben Voigt May 28 '14 at 15:30
    
@BenVoigt It's not quite cut and dried that splitting the answer due to length is bad. It just needs exceptional reasons, which didn't exist here. –  Deduplicator Feb 22 at 13:33

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