What is expected/customary procedure for crediting info from comments?

Question

Is there a generally accepted procedure for crediting info that someone suggests in the comments of my answer. Should I write something like "@coolrpg points out..." and then the info that user CoolRPG suggested I add in their comment. Or is crediting another user not expected?

Answer 1

There's no formal (or informal) policy, but it's usually nice to do

As the header mentions, there's no real policy around this. When someone suggests a change in the comments, the answerer sometimes edits their answer per the suggestion. Some people credit the user who suggested the change; some people don't. I don't think there's really any policy or even custom/expectation one way or the other.

It's generally a nice thing to do when the answerer credits the commenter that suggested the change, but I don't think anyone takes offense if they're not credited. After all, if the idea's substantial enough that they felt they deserved credit for it, the commenter could have left their own answer suggesting as much. For minor changes, it's rarely important enough to give special notice.

So do it if you want... Or don't. It's fine either way, in my perspective.

Answer 2

I asked an extremely similar question nearly 5 years ago, shortly after I joined the site, and, since then, I've adopted a couple of behaviors:

• As comments are both ephemeral and nearly the only form of constructive criticism an answer or question can receive, when a comment has a decisive impact on an answer or question, I'll credit the comment's writer with a link to that user's profile. That's both to acknowledge the comment writer and to provide the reader with some kind of indication of the comment writer's site credentials. The comment may disappear, but the profile's largely forever.
• However, what I want to do more often and forget to do all the darn time is credit a user who makes a valuable comment on one of my questions or answers in the question or answer's Edit Summary. I assume folks who really care about a question or answer do occasionally check in what way a question or answer changed over time, and crediting a user there seems to me the least obtrusive yet longest-lasting way to credit a user. (Later edits to a question or answer can remove the credit I've given other users in that question or answer; nothing, so far as I'm aware, changes an Edit Summary.)
• By the way, so you know, if another question or answer informs my question or answer, I credit and link to that other question or answer, like near the end of this answer. My questions and answers that do this are often either built on a foundation established by those other questions or would look like they were swiping material from those other questions or answers were I not to credit the other questions or answers. (By the way, there's nothing wrong with the uncredited swiping of material to inform your own questions or answers, but it makes me feel better when I acknowledge another question or answer as having informed my own.)

None of these are expected behaviors, though. These are all solely for me to make me feel better (and they do and they might make you feel better, too). I mean, if a user doesn't credit a similar answer—even if I wrote it—, I don't immediately think Thief! or anything. Nothing says that anyone must acknowledge comments or other questions or answers. Doing so anyway is all on you—do what makes you feel good.

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Note: The @username doesn't ping the user when put in questions or answers; just use username instead.