Etiquette for a Community Wiki Answer

Question

I think that Rosie F's question on Holmesian Streets is really interesting and that their answer is a great starting point but not a complete answer.

I would quite like to instigate a Community Wiki answer to allow people to pitch in with their own thought and research in a collaborative effort that would become more complete over time.

However, I cannot find any source purporting to offer complete gazetteer of street names occurring in the Holmes stories from which one might start to sort the real from the unreal, altered or borrowed streets.

Would it be in order to use the putative list presented in Rosie F's answer as a basis for a Community Wiki, imagining that it would be both added to and subtracted from over time? Or would that be an infringement of Rosie's work, or perhaps more importantly, just seem rude?

I'm aware that the comments I have made seem like picking at someone's answer, where what I would really prefer is a collaborative and constructive way to combine forces and which might allow for discussion rather than appearing to try and 'trump' other contributors.

Suggestions for the best way forward gratefully received.

To be clear, I'm no Holmesian aficionado, or Conan-Doyle buff, but I do like ferreting at old map sources and if people fed potential names into an answer I could indulge myself no end in chasing them down.

Answer 1

There are three possible options for improving on the current state of answers:

1. Post your own answer (not CW).
2. Edit the existing answer.
3. Post a CW answer.

Option 1 would require waiting until you've done all the necessary research to make a complete answer, which could take a while. I don't know if you're actually willing to do all of that work yourself, even over an extended period, and even if you are, an answer posted after weeks would probably languish unupvoted.

Choosing between options 2 and 3 really depends on how complete the existing answer is or how much progress it's made. If RosieF has already done most of the work, then it might be better to edit and improve that answer instead of posting a new one. If you want to start from scratch, without using much of what RosieF has done, then make another answer.

What I would not recommend is directly copying RosieF's answer, pasting it into a new CW, and starting your work from there. That would definitely seem rude IMO. If you want to start a new CW answer, then start from scratch. (My suggestion: search through a full text of the complete Holmes stories to find all streets mentioned, list them all, and start making links for the ones which are or were real London streets. That way you're starting a new piece of work independent from the existing answer.) Or if you believe RosieF has already found all the streets which might not be real ones, then you could just edit/comment on her answer to update any which are. Note that so far she's been updating her answer to reflect comments; this is an established network user, not a drive-by OP who'll never respond.

A 4th, compromise, option would be to turn the existing answer into a CW, thus preserving the work already done (and the rep RosieF already earned from it) and opening it up to a bigger collaborative project. But you can't just decide to do that; it would need both the OP's blessing and a moderator to do the CW conversion.