We've had a lot of traffic for candy-box-2 today. One of the encounters is with a squirrel who poses a series of riddles. As people got stuck on various riddles, they asked questions about the problem they had (a particular riddle) and got an answer about it.
- What is the answer to the third squirrel question?
- About the “tic-tac-toe squirrel challenge”
- What is the answer to the squirrel and the yellow hat riddle?
- What is the solution to the Squirrel sequence of letters question?
- The squirrel's riddle - how many marks on the tree trunk?
Then, later, someone decided it would make sense to collect all this information in one place, so posted the question (and answered):
Some users have now closed the older, singular questions as dupes of the new, consolidated question. I am not sure if this action is correct.
I am not going to attempt to be all inclusive here, but some pros and cons of having the consolidated question that I've seen listed (and may or may not agree with) are:
Pros
- It's easier to find all the answers to the squirrel's riddles if they're all in one place.
- It is a single encounter in the game, so they all should have been put together in the first place.
Cons
- Setting a precedent that it's okay to post a question composed of already-existing questions (with answers) and self-answering it could lead to rep whoring off the work of others.
- Closing the original questions as dupes may be seen as a penalty by the original askers and answerers.
- Sometimes people just want to see the one bit they're stuck on and not all the other riddles and solutions (though spoiler markup could help fix this).
There are almost certainly other pros and cons I'm missing.
What should be done? Should the consolidated question be closed (tough, since it also contains non-dupe information)? Should the original questions be closed? Should some sort of magical merge happen? Should they all simply be left open?