<p>Let's look at the question a little differently.  <strong>What strategy would you like to use for answering questions?</strong>  Lots of quick answers or a few well-crafted answers?</p>

<p>A look at this quarter's activity shows that some users have had to post (on the average) <em>five or more</em> answers in order to accrue the same number of upvotes and acceptances that a few other users acquire with a single answer.  Often <strong>that single answer is clear, authoritative, correct, definitive, well-illustrated, linked to appropriate references, at most lightly edited, and even..."pretty.</strong>" It is almost never downvoted.</p>

<p>(Although I could name many community members who have posted such answers, I would offer many of the posts by <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/930/chl?tab=answers&amp;sort=votes">chl</a> as examples: they have established a standard for us to aspire to.)</p>

<p>By comparison, those five quick answers--although they frequently convey useful replies--tend to be murky or technical (due to their brevity), lack references, occasionally err (at least originally), need extensive comments for clarification, have no illustrations or links, and have to be heavily edited for readability and $\TeX$ markup. They tend to collect anonymous downvotes and flags (which the community does not see but the moderators have to deal with, alas).  A large minority of them collect only one vote, or no votes, or end up deleted altogether.</p>

<p>I imagine it takes about the same amount of time and effort to create one good answer as to toss off five quick ones, especially once one becomes familiar with the tools provided by this site for linking, importing graphics, marking up text, and so on, which expedite the production of quality posts.</p>

<p>Although it is difficult to pin down any statistic that consistently distinguishes the two strategies--and both produce contributions that are valued and appreciated--<strong>SE encourages the first kind of answer:</strong> it stands the test of time, it attracts searches from outside, and in the best cases it informs, delights, and inspires readers.  I urge all in our community to aspire to that kind of contribution, even though I know it cannot be done all the time (and is not even appropriate for certain kinds of routine questions).  Yet I also know, from having read almost all the posts on our site, that a great many of you have demonstrated this capability.  So when deciding whether to spend your valuable time rushing to answer a lot of questions or answering a single one <em>really well,</em> <strong>I urge you to consider expressing your expertise and insight in a high-quality, well-crafted answer whenever you can.</strong>  The reputation, badges, and other statistics will then take care of themselves.</p>
