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I was working on Where is the Emperor in New Hope? and we have three really good answers (well 2 good ones and then mine) that all answer the question in different ways.
The best answer would be a fusion of the three, development, story theory, and in universe reasons. What is the best way of combining it without re-writing other answers?

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I see 2 solutions:

  1. The lazy solution is to just pick one answer and accept it. Anyone who sees the question in the future will see that there are 3 excellent answers. All 3 can get upvotes regardless of acceptance.
  2. Offer a bounty, mention that you want an answer that addresses all 3 aspects. This then provides attention and motivation for people to improve existing answers, or to add a new one that matches your goal.
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  • Wouldn't the result of #2 be one answer plagiarizing the other 2 or 3 answers since it sounds like the wanted content is ALREADY present in these? Sep 4 '14 at 18:53
  • @DVK Ideally, the answer would do more than just restate what the other answers have already stated - they would put the answers together in such a way that explains wholly the answer to the question. This doesn't always happen, but is the best way to go about combining answers.
    – Zibbobz
    Sep 5 '14 at 13:31
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    @Zibbobz - usually, with a couple of good answers, there's really no super-extensive new bundle of info to add to make it worth creating a brand new answer. Sep 5 '14 at 17:02
  • @DVK Maybe a better solution would be to write a question that asks for a more specific answer, such as specifying whether you're looking for in-canon, out-of-canon, or both?
    – Zibbobz
    Sep 5 '14 at 17:06
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Let's look at what the Help Center has to say about accepting answers.

Accepting an answer is not meant to be a definitive and final statement indicating that the question has now been answered perfectly. It simply means that the author received an answer that worked for him or her personally, but not every user comes back to accept an answer, and of those who do, they may not change the accepted answer if a newer, better answer comes along later.

So an answer that addresses your full concerns about the question, that you personally feel answers as fully and completely as possible, would be the correct answer to accept. If you do not know which answer that is, you can as Keen suggested offer a reward to those who have posted their answers as an incentive to improve the quality of their answers (or new users to post even better answers) and then choose the best one to accept and award the bounty.

Remember, there is no expiration date for a good question (and this IS a good question!), and if you have multiple good answers, starting a bounty on it to find a definitive answer will draw even more attention, which can make up for the bounty in itself. So you could stand to actually gain some reputation for a judicious use of a bounty.

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