Is it OK to edit and add your 2 cents to an answer?

Question

There have been scenarios where I felt adding a picture or link to documentation would add more weight and provide documented source to an answer, instead of posting a new answer with almost the same content. Am I violating any rules of the community or is this an acceptable practice ?

Answer 1

Per the community guidelines:

All contributions are licensed under Creative Commons, and this site is collaboratively edited, like Wikipedia. If you see something that needs improvement, click edit!

Editing is important for keeping questions and answers clear, relevant, and up-to-date. If you are not comfortable with the idea of your contributions being collaboratively edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you.

(Emphasis mine.)

So, in short, if you think an answer could be clarified, you are free to do so. From the time I've been a user, though, the usual etiquette is to comment and let the poster edit the answer themselves.

Note that newer users will require community consensus to edit an answer. Members with sufficient reputation can edit any answer without community consensus. With great responsibility comes great power.

Also, the edit should be beneficial:

Edits are expected to be substantial and to leave the post better than you found it. Common reasons for edits include:

• To fix grammar and spelling mistakes
• To clarify the meaning of the post (without changing that meaning)
• To include additional information only found in comments, so all of the information relevant to the post is contained in one place
• To correct minor mistakes or add updates as the post ages
• To add related resources or hyperlinks