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I am thinking specifically of this question, where my answer would be wholly different based on the type of virtual teaching environment. I would like to provide separate answers for each environment so that they can be evaluated (and voted on) separately. Some answers may be more useful than others.

I know that I have the ability to provide more than one answer to a question. If the two answers are substantively different, is that preferable to a single long, rambling answer of the type "In situation A, do this, ............ and in situation B..... this other thing"?

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    From the main SO.meta, it seems that the preferred method is to put both answers in one answer, using headers to distinguish them.
    – eykanal
    Aug 12, 2012 at 13:41
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    I'm with eykanal on this one. Don't use multiple answers to a single question unless there's no other option. You can use the headers to distinguish different parts of your answer, so you should do so, rather than creating multiple answers.
    – aeismail
    Aug 12, 2012 at 15:17

2 Answers 2

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I tend to prefer them being put in the same answer using headers or bullet points or something to distinguish them for a few reasons:

  1. Two 50-point answers does not a gold badge make ;)
  2. If you provide two excellent answers, it removes any conflict about which one to accept as "the" answer
  3. It keeps your two-part answer together, so that variation in voting doesn't split them off. This is less of a big deal if they can truly be separated with no harm done, but I find this to be fairly rare.
  4. It makes referring to @CleverUser's answer somewhat confusing.
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The vote is done to the answer as a whole. You would probably get higher votes for a more complete answer, or even several answers.

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