Time to take a step back from multiple answer criticism

Question

I've noticed a few times now that people are enforcing (probably too much) the apparent policy about one answer per post. Here are a couple of examples:

• How to write in a straight line without lined paper?
• How to jump start a car without another car - this shows how half of an answer was deleted because someone had answered with a similar solution after the original post (which has subsequently become the top rated answer - but hey, I'm not bitter or anything...).

Also there are loads of examples with seriously long lists which have not been addressed.

Basically my point is - it looks bad having someone answer multiple times, as it kind of looks like they just want to bump up their rep, not to mention the fact it would completely clutter up the page with numerous answers.

I would say that they only need to really be broken up within the post - i.e. not one massive block of text which is never appealing.

I just think some people need to take a chill pill when it comes to these sorts of posts as the people answering are just trying to be as helpful as possible. Perhaps as some middle ground it should be enforced that people clearly label different options / methods within a single post so the information can be easily extracted without having to trawl through the text.

e.g.

Answer 1:

• blah blah blah...

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Answer 2:

• More twoddle

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etc...

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I don't mean to sound like a douche but I just think that a couple of certain individuals need to take a step back and think "this is probably one of the only sites on the SE network that a single user would post multiple responses in one post" - for most of the other SE sites there are usually only one answer that would solve the problem, or at least only one that a single person would think of and have the time to explain.

This meta post writes about what a good Lifehacks answer should look like and at no point does it mention "DO NOT LIST MULTIPLE ANSWERS", in fact it states something that would be completely the opposite of that:

If your hack does have obvious tradeoffs, you can "innoculate" it by including conventional solutions! I've made good use of this in the past, as have many others. I guess this kinda makes sense - you're essentially providing enough information for readers to judge the applicability of the "hack" in the answer itself instead of relying on them knowing it (or the asker explaining why he can't use it), so it side-steps a lot of common problems.

I just feel it needed to be brought to the attention of some.

Answer 1

The problem with having multiple answers/solutions in one post is that users aren't able to vote on each individual solution. If you have two solutions to a problem, and one of them doesn't work at all, and the other works perfectly, how do users vote on that? All they can really do is comment saying one works, and the other doesn't. Splitting those solutions up into multiple posts allows users to vote on each solution independently, thus allowing that terrible solution to be shoved off our site and that fantastic solution to rise to the top.

Robert covers this here A Lifehacks Manifesto, and I'd suggest giving it a read.

Answer 2

We cannot properly vet posts with multiple unrelated solutions. Let's say I post an answer that contains both a great solution, and a completely unrelated terrible and ill-advised solution. How does one vote on that answer? Do you vote up because I have a great solution? Do you vote down because I also recommend something that is a blatantly bad solution? Do you leave it at zero because they balance each other out?

It gets weird when multiple solutions are contained within one post. If we separate that into two answers, then the voting is easy. That is the logic behind one answer per post.

This isn't the only site on the SE network that does one answer per post. Software Recommendations also does the same, for the same reason, and I think the logic is similar here. Keeping to one recommendation per post allows voters to vote on the individual recommendation, and not have to vote on a package of recommendations.