What to do with lengthy partial progress

Question

I currently have a question on TCSSE that has not gotten an answer yet. I have been working on the question myself in the meantime, and have already added a first update with partial progress. Recently, I have figured out more partial progress (another case of the problem with a known answer); however, the proof of this case is decently long, and I worry that it will bog down the question and make it less readable.

What is the best practice here? Is there a way to have a collapsible section of the question with the second progress update? (I checked the CommonMark documentation and didn't see anything.) I could post an answer with the progress, but then I worry it would reduce interest/traffic to my question.

Answer 1

In the spirit of the original Stack Overflow, a Question should contain a question and some background but not much more. Instead:

• You could post your partial progress on a blog somewhere and link to that.

• If you want a timestamp that proves when you made the progress, you could submit a paper to arXiv.org

Answer 2

I think you should post it as an answer. This is most helpful to other users, and it is commonly done on this site. If you state clearly at the outset that the answer is only a partial progress, this should not mislead others into thinking the question is resolved.