This question already has an answer here:

I recently answered Clean list of strings that are included on the own strings, which is now closed as unclear. While I certainly agree that the question is not particularly well written (mostly due to non-native-English-speaker type issues), I didn't find it all that hard to understand. Additionally, it's not an obvious duplicate, and my answer (IMAO) demonstrates some interesting shell features and is potentially useful to other people.

I've been trying to follow the various discussions about question quality, but I'm basically a newb here, so my question is this: by answering that question, did I contribute to the decline of SO?


marked as duplicate by Cody Gray, Mureinik, Martijn Pieters, It's been a pleasure, Luksprog Jun 5 '14 at 10:50


If anything you demonstrated that with some effort and good reading comprehension, the question was answerable. If the closers assert that the question was to vague to be answered, then you disproved that assertion with what is known in discrete mathematics as a disproof by counterexample. –  AaronLS Jun 4 '14 at 20:51
Just another example of a valuable member of the site being afraid because of the so called "decline of SO"... you did good kid! –  Tanner Jun 4 '14 at 21:32
I think you did everything spot on. Welcome, please stick around and continue like this as long as you can. –  Richard Le Mesurier Jun 5 '14 at 10:56

2 Answers 2

Yes, if you understood what the OP wanted then it was fine to answer it. It would have been especially good if you had edited the question to clear things up for future readers.

The second sentence being the really important part. If it's useful for future readers then it's more than worth answering. –  Ben Jun 4 '14 at 18:19
Yeah, I may get around to cleaning up the question itself at some point. –  Aaron Davies Jun 4 '14 at 18:20
@AaronDavies, great, you're the one in the best position to do that, since you understood what he wanted. –  Lance Roberts Jun 4 '14 at 18:20

If a question is really unclear and hard to understand, and you take the time to go above and beyond what is expected of a reader and manage to parse out what the question is actually asking you should edit the question to make it a clear question. Then answer it, after the question is a clear question.

'Tidying up' after an answer has been accepted stands less chance of misinterpreting an unclear Q. –  pnuts Jun 4 '14 at 20:20
@pnuts If you yourself aren't sure what a question is asking then you should be asking clarifying questions in comments to figure out what the question is asking, not answering it. –  Servy Jun 4 '14 at 20:25
I have often been both sure and wrong. –  pnuts Jun 4 '14 at 20:27
@pnuts Then the OP can roll back your edit and clarify why your changes are incorrect. That still results in the question being clarified. –  Servy Jun 4 '14 at 20:28
OP may not revert for days, if at all, during which interval others may be wasting their time ‘answering’ my (wrong) idea of the issue – that when rolled back (if OP knows of this) makes a nonsense of such A’s. –  pnuts Jun 4 '14 at 20:32
@pnuts The same general problem occurs when you answer a question with an incorrect assumption about what it means. That's why you should be careful when doing either and make sure that you're very confident. –  Servy Jun 4 '14 at 20:34
I generally am both. –  pnuts Jun 4 '14 at 20:36
Its interesting. Today i recevied a letter that i shouldn't ask questions here , cause my previuos question was not answered. I see that forum changes its own rules almost every day. Maybe its better to make another list of rules for long time? Now its hard to understand what is right or wrong here... –  Lucky Jun 4 '14 at 22:01
I think this is potentially poor advice, at least if applied without thought. It's a different task to clarify a question without changing the meaning (formatting, tweak wording) - to editing a question after having answered it and being entirely sure what "the problem" was (which may be completely different from the asked question, not so in this case). Editing the question, and then answering it runs the risk of changing the meaning, possibly unintentionally, and answering something different than what the author meant. –  AD7six Jun 4 '14 at 22:17
@AD7six If you're not sure what the question is then you should be asking clarifying questions to figure out what the question is, not answering it. –  Servy Jun 4 '14 at 23:54
@Lucky You shouldn't re-post the same question just because it's not answered. There is no reason to not ask a different question just because a previous one wasn't answered. And I don't see how either case is at all related to this question. –  Servy Jun 4 '14 at 23:55
@Servy I disagree where you're practically certain of the problem and that means writing a comment along the lines of "I think the problem is x, can you check please?" instead of just writing an answer. Here's an example for illustration; was I able to identify the problem? yes. Was I absolutely certain it was the one-and-only cause of problems? no, there's always scope for error. Had I blindly updated the question to better describe the actual problem it would be a disservice to the OP had I been wrong or missed something else. –  AD7six Jun 5 '14 at 9:03

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