I say/ask this for several reasons: 1) My answer that, for being "similar" to an already existing one, might force an edit that could disrupt the previous answer if i decide to erase parts of the answer, or if i am not counscious on that edit, etc. (forgive me if i am not understanding the practical dynamics of the answer editing process) 2) Answering "similarly" could be automatically arranged as a parallel answer to the supposedly similar already existing answer, either from text processing to make comparisons (this interests me and steers towards a personal project), or from tags, that can be compared and statiscally "counted" to see if theres a similar text with those tags (i could ellaborate on this - again considering my personal project - that some tags, even if different in words, can be the same - synonyms, related, tag network, etc.) 3) My new answer, although supposedly "similar" could bring more to the discussion if kept individually instead of merged into some other. I see a lot of potential on this Q&A system, that could be excitingly expanded.
Forgive this text if i am missing some important point on the dynamics of Yoomoot. :) I am very interested on the subject and navigating Yoomoot is messing with my neurons..in a good way.
Proposal no. 2 would be great, and some version of it would be very helpful even within the existing system as a way of auto-suggesting to people that an answer should be merged. In the existing system it possibly to merge an answer with an existing answer while still keep a sense of their separateness. For example, two users MrAndrews and MsBlue could have two separate answers within the same answer simply by adding "[username] says:" before their bit. Like this:
MrAndrews says: Yes, that's a very goood idea MsBlue says: Yes, I also think that's a good idea. My grandma did the same thing and it worked wonders for her.