Question: When I posted different answers to a question, some people seemed to frown upon it.

[Is $G/pG$ is a $p$-group?](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/232526/is-g-pg-is-a-p-group)

Answer: 
There are various *honorable* reasons that one may have for posting more than one answer to a question. For example, often I am interested in judging how well-known various approaches are, so that I can use that feedback to revise my teaching methodology. This is more difficult to do if one places multiple answers in one post since then it is not clear which particular answer the votes and comments target (which, by the way, is a *huge* problem with votes on multiple-answers on *meta*). 

For a concrete example, I explicitly chose *not* to place the well-known degree-based approach into my [answer on why polynomial rings are not fields,](https://math.stackexchange.com/a/2523/242) because I sought to determine what sort of response the given *universal* approach would receive. The surprisingly large number of votes it received (along with the tone of the comments) helped provide further evidence to confirm my suspicion that many algebra textbooks do not effectively teach such universal ideas. 

It is important to keep in mind that - in this way - the site provides useful feedback to teachers. Having *sharp modular boundaries* between *logically independent answers* serves to optimize the value of such feedback. This allows teachers to *learn* as well as teach, which provides much further motivation for teachers to participate. And, of course, the more teachers we have participating, the more the site will prosper.

Another reason for posting multiple answers is to draw modular boundaries between knowledge levels. Sometimes I post answers that include both elementary and advanced perspectives on topics. These combined posts often receive fewer votes than if I separate the answer into an elementary post and an advanced post. Probably this is because the advanced parts scare away those with no knowledge of the advanced topics, so they stop reading - mistakenly believing that the *entire* post is too advanced.

Similarly, students may have honorable reasons for posting multiple answers in separate posts. For example, a student with two answers may be confident of the first, but may have doubts about the second answer. Thus it makes sense to post the second answer separately, so that feedback on it can be appropriately isolated. Otherwise, if both answers were combined into one post and the second answer had problems, then the combined answer might receive a mix of upvotes and downvotes, which might relay false impressions about the first answer, e.g. misleading readers into thinking that the first answer also has problems. Further, the first answer might not get elevated to the proper level of exposure, possibly leaving an inferior answer to be the highest-voted. 

Generally, readers may desire to upvote some answers and downvote others, which is not possible if they are all combined into one answer.

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Finally, one tangential point is worth emphasis. Before one leaps towards accusations such as "reputation farming" etc, it is important to keep in mind that not everyone pays attention to reputation, so it may not even occur to some folks that posting multiple answers might be viewed that way. Indeed, some of us are here simply to share our knowledge of mathematics, and have been doing so for years in other forums (e.g. usenet newsgroups) where reputation plays no role. Please try to keep in mind the diversity of our community before jumping to possibly unfounded conclusions about such matters.
**Usual cases**

There is nothing wrong with giving multiple answers, as long as they are sufficiently different. However, it is customary to give them all in the same post, headed by a **bold title** and separated by a line `***`.

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**Exceptional cases**

If one of the answers is very long, it might be necessary to make an additional post, but that is a very exceptional case.