Question

Question #4c82f

Answer 1

One of the things I like (most of the time) about Socratic and other open sites, is that each contributor is free to post as they wish. With the (sometimes irritating) possibility that other contributors will either add to or delete from one's post.

As far as I know, there is no "official" answer to this issue.

My advice is to answer to the best of your ability and as you see appropriate. Then remain calm if someone else edits your answer. (And think twice before do extreme edits -- unless the answer is incorrect.)

As my own policy, I tend to not answer questions that I cannot give some explanation of.
I think the question "How to do 1+1?" is a question I would simply not answer. I cannot think of an explanation appropriate to the audience here.

Answer 2

Not really.

Explanation:

If I understood your question correctly, then the answer is not really.

Socratic answers should contain an explanataion to how that answer came about.

You can read more about that here:

http://socratic.org/answering-basics

I say should because no one will stop from posting the quick solution; most of the time, however, we try to flag such answers for "more explanation", provided that we actually manage to spot them.

In your example, if you ask How do you calculate 1+1?, and someone simply puts a `2` in the answer box, then that is not what we would call a "great" answer.

In my oponion, the most important thing contributors should focus on when answering a question on Socratic is the process that lead to the answer.

The concepts that a contributor applies to get an answer are more important than the "solution" itself..

Contributors should not answer a question because they know how to answer it, but because they want to teach others how to solve similar problems in the future.

Even if the question reads What is 1+1?, and not How to solve 1+1?, simply posting `2` seems insufficient.

Don't get me wrong, not all answers can or should be "perfectly explained", but anything is better than just the "solution".

So if you see answers that follow this model, don't hesitate to either flag them for "more explanation" or add a little bit of info yourself.