> I've also seen quite a few instances where the person needed fundamental corrections for their problems before their main problem could even be addressed, and

> I've also seen quite a few instances where the person needed fundamental corrections for their problems before their main problem could even be addressed, and they absolutely refused to accept those basic corrections first. It makes it impossible to help them with their real problem. In my experience, order isn't actually that critical. Sure, answering the question they asked won't solve their problem, but it will answer their question. Maybe solving their problem isn't what they want or need. Even if it is, the quickest and most painless way to navigate this social dynamic is to just answer the question they asked, and let them run into the other problems you predicted. This is especially important on StackOverflow (but also important to forums in general), because the entire point is to publish an answer to the question so others can find it later. By answering a person's problems instead of answering their question, you are just leaving more noise for the next person to dig through. Of course, it's still common to stumble about and ask the wrong questions; so how do we reconcile that? I think what StackOverflow is missing is a path for users to answer a question with another question. If we could communicate with the question asker to rephrase their question, then we could have them edit it, and trim the search engine noise for everyone else.