Question: It is a given that, with time, questions and answers will become out dated. Good answers will not always apply to future patches, and questions may concern issues that simply do not exist in newer patches.

I have been linked to a few meta posts regarding the appropriate action. [The consensus here](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/946/outdated-answers-due-to-patches) is that out of date answers should be edited to be up to date.

The same mod has answered [a similar question](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1339/how-should-we-deal-with-out-of-date-questions-answers), showing a markdown method to keep the original authors intent, but since has steered towards "leave a comment, alert the author" and "post your own, up to date answer".

[There is another similar question](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1527/update-old-answers-according-to-patch-notes-for-unreleased-patch), however it does not appear to have had as much traffic, and the accepted answer appears to be a reference to the first question.

This is where my question comes in. **Is it appropriate to add completely new content to a question, where there is a new solution due to newer changes to the game**?

What defines the difference between updating an answer to be current, and going against the authors intent?

Answer: 
Answers are our bread and butter. They're the whole reason the site *exists*. We also provide our strongest rewards for answers: 10 whole rep per upvote, along with perhaps an accept.

There's lots of incentive for answering a question. In fact, that's our heaviest moderation task; sorting the chaff from the wheat. We get plenty of contributions, but not all that many of them are very *useful*.

Which leads me to my suggestion:

If an answer is out of date, **post your own, up-to-date answer**. We're kind of making a mountain out of a molehill here. Unless the update is incredibly minor, such as the UI was updated to move the button or something, the process is straightforward, and has several advantages of doing so:

1. The question now has an up-to-date answer, and can help (potentially) many readers.
2. You get rep for doing so, which will reinforce the whole cycle nicely.
3. More importantly, the original answerer *won't* get more rep (or, at least, not as much. Accepted answers tend to garner additional drive-bys.).

At the end of the day, whoever has answered a question has tried to add some useful content, and with games continually updating, still has a useful answer for an older version of the game. As time passes, the answerer may not even play the game anymore, and may not even be able to keep the answer up to date. It seems counter productive to reward them some more because they happened to be the first or accepted answer.

The SE network tends to have a self-reinforcing cycle for this behaviour. We're in a bit of an edge case, as most of what we play can exist in multiple versions, and every answer potentially has some utility to a fraction of the playerbase.

The one issue we run into for this, though, is for MMOs and online games; these are games where you *can't* play older versions. It's the latest, or you're not playing. This is where the M.SE feature for obsolete answers would come in handy, but until then, the steps would be generally the same, except add one more to the end:

4. Downvote the old answer, and comment that it's now out-of-date, and doesn't work anymore.

Depending on how old the answer is, it might even be eligible for deletion; the answerer got their rep from helping, but without keeping it up to date, it's no longer a useful answer. But the rep won't go away, and deleting those old answers keeps the site much cleaner.

But deletion only applies in those cases where the answer is completely obsolete; MMOs and other online games that require specific versions.
I disagree with the other answers. **It really depends on what sort of editing you are doing.**

**TL;DR** Edit if you're just updating old information, post a new answer if you're adding content.

---

I believe edits **should be used if you are updating the existing, obselete information. You're not adding anything; just updating.** Look at the below example:

> 
> **Q:** [Minecraft] How can I make a golden apple?
> 
> 
> **A:** You can make an 'enchanted golden apple' with one apple surrounded by 8 gold blocks.
> 
> 
> ~~For a normal golden apple, you need to surround the apple in gold nuggets, which are dropped by Zombie Pigmen. However, this is less powerful than the enchanted version.~~ 
> 
> 
> As of version 1.6.1, normal golden apples are created by surrounding an apple with 8 gold *ingots*.
> 
> 
> [please note the history of golden apples has been simplified]
> 
> 
> 

This is a good edit as it updates the answer to the current version of the game without adding any additional unnecessary content. Any new content that you add yourself is going against the author's intent.

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However, **if you are adding new content** (such as a new strategy/procedure, or correcting the answer since it is wrong) **it should be posted as a new answer.** 

Take the previous example; if I were to add that chickens now drop golden poop [they do not, ignore this example] and explained how to turn this into ingots (hence into golden apples), this would be a **bad** edit since it adds new content to the answer, which goes against the original intent of the answerer. 

Anyway, posting a new answer will give you more rep than simply editing the existing answer, so you've got nothing to lose.

---

So really, it depends what your edit is. Avoid overwriting the original post, but make sure that it is up to date. 

If your new answer is up against a highly-voted answer which is out of date, edit in a notice stating that this content is out of date as of version X.X to make users read on. 

Also, remember to **never edit completely incorrect answers to be correct**. [A question in the Meta.SE FAQ](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5408/what-is-the-etiquette-for-correcting-old-questions-with-incorrect-answers) has already decided that incorrect content should not be edited to be correct.