In response, an SE employee cleaned up the mess by adding links and quoting the text.
I've been going around, doing some cleanup and I feel these answers have way too much quoted material to fall within "fair use". Even so, it hurts our reputation as a gardening Q&A site if all we have is material from other sites.
Some of you have answered some of the questions, and I think it would be nice if you could neatly incorporate important points from the user's plagiarized answer (only if you think it is necessary) into your own, and link to the reference if you do so. You needn't mention the other user. Their answers have been deleted (not all of them yet... taking it one by one), but you guys have enough rep to view deleted answers.
For e.g., @bstpierre, I've modified your answer to include a gist of the other answer and the contents of the comment. Please see if you agree with it and feel free to modify it as you wish.
@mancuniensis Could you perhaps do the same with your answer to this question
@mikeperry You've had some good answers on lawn upkeep & renovations. Could you perhaps answer this one?
@MikePerry no, you haven't answered any of them. I was suggesting that since you have several good answers on lawn maintenance, you could give that Q a shot
@winwaed and @MikePerry don't be afraid to cast close votes on borderline stuff. We have been using the mod hammer more often then we would like to. It would be nice if you guys could help us out.
@yoda Just not as colourful as the Berlin Wall. Sure I can attack those two. So research my own answers and reference properly. I may refer to books if that is okay. I don't think I have full delete privileges yet (?) but I could definitely downvote the answers.
@winwaed Yeah, you can refer to books. I think answer deletion privileges come with 5k in beta... and there are other restrictions such as answers should have a score of -1 , etc
best thing to do is to flag a mod and give the reason for it to be deleted
Okay, I'll take on those two answers "sometime today" (I've got sensory overload at the moment - working at home gives me a lot of flexibility but I'm away this weekend and I'll be travelling back to Blighty in 8 days)
@winwaed np. yoda and I are just hoping our super active high rep guys can take some of the burden off of our shoulders. Plus you guys are the real experts around here. I know very little about gardening...just enough to get some veggies out of the ground.
I don't think I know that much - partly luck in the early days (lots of pepper questions - something I like to think I do know about, although I've also learnt from many of the answers), and many early questions were on general topics - things like composting and raised beds. I'm less knowledgeable about the more specialist questions we're getting now.
I think we had a few 99s in there, but yes it has been a bit hot recently and for a long time (like last year). It will be cooler when I'm back in the UK next week, and in about 10 days I'll be in Snowdonia - which had snow/hail a couple of weeks ago on the top of Snowdon(!). This also means I'll be absent for about 3 weeks - my 100 day gold medal will have to wait...
The Garden Shed
The Garden Shed