What if in matlab answer, your answer is robbed by the questioner and he accepts only his all by himself

I have encountered more than twice now. In the answer community, after you answered a question, the questioner made a minor correction then wrote it down as his answer and accepted it all on his own, which really upset me. Though I am very passionate to help others with their problems, I feel hurt and not being respected facing such a thing. I don't know what to do, any one can help me?

[Bjorn Gustavsson]

Put them on your "asterix"-list and never help them again. Your reputation will grow good, theirs will not.

[Wan Ji]

Well, I won't answer the questions in mathworks community any longer

[Bjorn Gustavsson]

Please don't stop, when you do something good for free there will be some people that aren't appropriately grateful (disappointing - but such people exist). Hopefully one collects "universal brownie-points" that somehow will be rewarded by good karma at some point in time. A pity if a couple of ungratefuls sours you - but: your time and your choise.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Our assumption is that the person who posted the code is the person who knows best what they actually need.

If what they needed at the time was to copy someone else's ideas, and make a worse version of those ideas, then that is what they needed at the time. We might possibly spend some time trying to convince them that the form they used will have bugs, or we might advise them that a different version is better style, but we let them accept what they accept.

When a person posts a question and accepts their own Answer, then they do not get any reputation points for doing so. So they have not taken away any reputation points from the person who did all the work -- not any more than if the person had not accepted any Answer (which is something that happens a lot.)

After a question has had time to settle, one of the volunteers might possibly notice it and decide to Unaccept a weak answer and Accept a different Answer -- which gives reputation points to the person who posted the now-Accepted answer (unless it was the same person who posted the Question.)

But to be honest, we usually only do that if the originally accepted Answer does not answer the Question (for example if it is only the person clarifying what the Question is), or if the new answer is significantly better... or sometimes if a completely new way of doing something becomes available and we are able to turn a "you can't do that" or "you have to use this hack" into a "Yes, here is a better way that is now possible!"

As volunteers, we usually do not have the time to go looking at time records in detail to figure out whether a poster probably arrived at an answer independently, or if they read a previous solution and copied it. Disputes about who deserves to get reputation points for a particular Question never end well :(

One thing to keep in mind is that there are common conventions on some variable names, and there are a limited number of ways of writing the same basic ideas -- and so sometimes different people post exactly the same code (except perhaps for spacing), with each of the people having created it independently.

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

@Wan Ji, if you want the points, give us the link and we can Vote for it. It will give you 2 points per vote, the same number of points as if the OP had accepted it, or even more if more people vote for it.

If you have only 2 wrong accepts after 106 answers, that's not bad. Most of us have way more than that. A common reason is that the user just decides to go in and accept ALL answers but only the first one they click can be accepted, and none of the others below it in the list get points. And often the first answer is clearly not the best by any measure. So, yeah, this happens, a lot. Almost as much, or maybe more often, than giving an answer that clearly works but the OP never coming back to accept any answer or even reply to them.

And sometimes users accept the very first post which clearly doesn't even work - not sure why, but they do. Then I post a working answer which they don't respond to, but instead answer the first/wrong post saying it doesn't work. Then I have to add a comment saying to look at my Answer below. Then they'll say thanks but don't unaccept the wrong answer and accept mine or even vote for it. So I never got any points while the person with a wrong answer got the points. This also happens a lot.

So I understand your frustration but all I can say is that you'll have to get used to it if you stay here. And I encourage you to stay here because your contributions are valuable and a "robbed points" ratio of 2% is actually not bad. Heck, Walter would earn 4 times as many points as us (instead of twice as many) if he'd post his answers as his own Answers instead of sticking them in the Comment list of other people's Answers.

[Walter Roberson]

Sometime last year I peaked at earning 1 3/4 points per hour; I am lower than that now. 1 3/4 points per hour is not very much... but it adds up to over 15000 per year.