> librarians would close new questions I was in the middle of penning a non-trivial answer to because they'd misunderstood what the user was actually asking B

> librarians would close new questions I was in the middle of penning a non-trivial answer to because they'd misunderstood what the user was actually asking By the way, if you don't want your answer go to waste in this situation and the question was on-topic, you could open your own question (reword the original question if it wasn't clear) and then immediately self-answer it. About half of my questions are self-answered. Many because I found a solution before anyone else answered. Some because I found a solution while preparing a question but didn't submit it yet (this happens quite a lot to me). Some I even planned as self-answers from the beginning, when it took me a lot time to find a solution an issue that wasn't on SO yet. All of those questions were well received.