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The problem is that stage 2 is impossible. The thing that makes the question unanswerable is missing information, or a genuine misunderstanding on the part of
by mark-r 7y ago
The problem is that stage 2 is impossible. The thing that makes the question unanswerable is missing information, or a genuine misunderstanding on the part of the asker. It's very rare for phrasing to be the problem.
- gumoro 7y agoSometimes the asker is missing a concept, and it's not always impossible to comment about it and rephrase the question to make it answerable & more useful to keep for posterity. It's far from the majority of questions, but not awfully rare either. Some of those are worth salvaging.
- mark-r 7y agoIf you understand enough of the question to rephrase it, you probably understand it well enough to answer it too. Adding a middle step just gets in the way. I've answered questions like that, and it's gratifying when it turns out your understanding was correct.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoAnd it is terribly annoying when someone changes the question and it no longer leads towards an answer that is useful for the asker.
- gumoro 7y agoYes, that's why I thought OP's idea of explicitly separating the derived "better" questions interesting, instead of allowing anyone to edit the original question and steer the discussion in a different direction. This is an interesting format that leaves room for multiple directions to explore… which SO does not want to do as they insist so much on focus.