Question

When does an answer become 'yours'?

I just unlocked 'Legendary' recently, but on my profile, it says I've only answered 487 questions. I've also noticed that when I edit some questions, it says I've answered it, and not the original contributor. So I'm guessing the rest of the 'answers' came from those? So my question is how much editing needs to be done so that someone else's answer becomes my own, if indeed that is the case?

Answer 1

When you get more than `50%` of the contribution.

Explanation:

That happens because the count that we use for the badges does not take into account deleted answers.

In other words, when you answer a question, the count we use for the badges and the count on your profile page go `+1`. When an answer gets deleted, the count on your profile page goes `-1`, but the count for the badges stays the same.

To answer your next question, yes, answers do get deleted sometimes for various reasons [I'm not going to go into that here].

That said, we've had some problems with the badges in the past, so maybe there is more than meets the eye here because I'm not sure that deleted answers can account for that difference.

Now, when an edit gets you more than `50%` of the total contribution to the answer, that answer becomes "yours", i.e. you appear listed as the top contributor.

That does not mean that your edit counts as an answer--it still counts as an edit.

Check out this answer and this answer for a discussion on how this works.