No, not exactly. From [1], the XY problem is "you are trying to solve problem X, and you think solution Y would work, but instead of asking about X when you run

No, not exactly. From [1], the XY problem is "you are trying to solve problem X, and you think solution Y would work, but instead of asking about X when you run into trouble, you ask about Y." So person is trying to solve X, but asks "How do you do Y?" "Why are you trying to do Y?" "Well, I want X and Y seems to be the solution" "No, to solve X you want to do Z." In this case the asker nicely gave their X as part of the question, but the bulk of the question was still about trying to move forward on their mistaken "solution" Y. 1. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-x... (and note all the other answers saying the same thing.)