There is a question that was clarified by the asker enough so that putting a comment to my question may not be the best approach.  If the clarification substantially changes the question is there any problem with just writing a second complete answer?  Here is the question in question.
11405
I'm not sure if there's already an existing term for this, so I'm inventing my own. (tl;dr: I call them &quot;chameleon questions&quot; because they change every time you submit or edit an answer.  If you're already intimately familiar with the phenomenon, please skip past the first set of bullet points to where I ask for recommendations.)  I think many of us have experienced this on occasion:  You open up a narrow-looking question, usually dealing with some specific error message.  The question probably contains a snippet of sloppy but not quite awful code; code indicating that the author, typically a new/low-rep user, possibly a , doesn't really know what they're doing.  I'm not trying to be condescending here, they're probably very intelligent and hardworking, but in this specific case, they're clearly in way over their head.  However, as a question, it's not really too bad.  The goal and problem are both clearly stated.  The code is formatted (sort of).  Mort was polite and checked their spelling.  The question looks answerable, although from a rep perspective* it's an obvious dead-end, it's had maybe 3 views in the past 30 minutes.  So you decide, you know what, this person took the time to write up the question properly, they deserve an answer, put on your good citizen hat and throw them a bone.  You slog through the ugly code, find the offending line, direct their attention to it and explain why it's wrong and how it needs to be fixed.  Later, they leave a comment saying that yes, that was indeed the problem and your answer helped them fix it (great!).  Oh, but, now there's another problem (uh-oh...). Something else is broken.  After letting out a long sigh, you read the comment and/or edited question, roll up your sleeves, and write up Take 2, hoping that's the end of it.  And of course it's not the end.  Now maybe the error is gone, but it's not doing what it's supposed to.  If you're anything like me, your patience is now starting to wear thin. It's lousy code and you didn't volunteer to help them rewrite their whole app.  And of course, the question still only has 12 views, and nobody has upvoted either the question or your answer, including the person you're helping, so this is turning out to be a genuinely thankless task in all respects.  Welcome to &quot;Family Tech Support&quot;, Web 2.0 Edition.   * Which is of course just an arbitrary number that none of us care about. Not really, anyway. Not very much, at least.  So, here's where I get to my question.  At this point, do you:  Leave a comment, stating as politely as possible that you've done your best to help them answer the original question they asked, and if they have a new problem then they should start a new question?  (I did this once, and actually ended up with an accept, but I felt kind of guilty afterwards, I don't think anybody answered their 2nd question).  Bite the bullet and edit your answer a 3rd, 4th, 5th time, however many times it takes to resolve their issue, knowing full well that they may not even remember to accept the answer once you're done? (I may work for free on SO, but that doesn't mean my time is worthless.)  Just abandon the question, hoping that it will force Mort to start thinking for himself?  Something else?   I've tried all three of the above and none of them ever quite feel right. I do want to help, but at the same time there are a lot more &quot;lucrative&quot; questions I could be answering. And I don't mind spending a lot of time on an answer either, if the question is interesting or important to me, but debugging is dull work. I'd prefer not to reference specific questions here; I'm pretty sure that this is a shared experience, and my objective isn't to point fingers at &quot;misbehaving&quot; members.  I'm more looking for some practical advice on how to dig myself out of these pits of despair. Anybody have any other ideas?
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I've just answered .  After accepting the answer, the OP then changed his question to another problem - which I know I shouldn't have answered (I should have requested as new question) but I updated my answer anyway.  The OP has now edited his question to remove the essence of either the original or new problem, and instead has a statement saying that the problem has been fixed.  What is the correct thing to do here?  Roll the question back so it's in its original state? Roll it back to the "new problem" state? Leave it and let him continue to get downvoted and/or closed by people who didn't see the original question?
26045
If someone asks how to do XYZ, and you think doing XYZ at all is a Bad Idea™, is it valid to post an answer saying so? You aren't answering the question, but instead, arguing the question's validity.  You could do this in a comment, but I don't think comments carry enough weight on occasion.  For example, I came across this today ; for those not wanting to link away:     I would like to build a wiki based website about professors, so that students can share information and check the reputation of the professor before working for him.   and I really wanted to post an answer that said, "I think this is a very bad idea". (In fact I did anyway, despite awareness that it could get myself flamed.)  Was I wrong? What should I have done instead?
51805
I have come across this scenario on several occasions where a user posts a comment that answers the question. When they receive positive feedback, they post it as an answer. Is this bad practice? In my own case, if I am not 100% sure I will comment first and see if that worked for the OP. Sometimes there are more than one problem and that is why I don't post an answer immediately. Here is an example  that illustrates the issue. Should the first commenter get the credit, or the first answerer?
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Is answering beyond the scope of the question a valid thing? Or should we just stick to the question asked and ignore any potential bugs which might be present (of course OP is unaware of that, as of now).  To make myself more clear, please have a look at this .  There are 3 answers which talk about the issue asked and that's it. If you look at my answer, I've added an additional point about a potential bug which the OP has missed now (may find out later). So is it a good thing to point out such potential bugs or not? Should this practice be encouraged?
92661
Sometimes, when I answer a question on Stack Overflow, I have two different answers that are equally valid. This happens most when answering architectural questions where there are many valid ways to solve a problem.  Is it better to put each alternative into a single answer, or put each alternative in its own answer?  Posted each alternative separately will allow the voting system to float the best answer to the top, but I don't want to be accused of rep whoring by "flooding" a question with answers.  What's your opinion? One or two answers?
48822
I just answered , then deleted the answer because I realized what I said had already been covered. After deleting, I editing in a note saying why I deleted it, but that edit bumped the question on the home page.  I assume that the question will get bumped if I undelete the answer (which is proper behaviour), but I think in the case where someone edits a deleted answer, there's no point bumping the question for content that most people aren't going to see (and since the answer is deleted, shouldn't be seen anyway).  EDIT: A nifty way to abuse the system (10k+ only!).
43850
Allow converting comments to answers, so they can become accepted answers.  I asked a question. Someone commented on it, and it was an awesome comment that fully answered the question. As the original questioner, I would like to convert that comment to an answer in order to accept it.  Or, if you prefer, I would be okay with being able to simply mark the comment as accepted.
78182
I ask a lot of question on SO, so this recommendation/idea comes from that experience. I'm not really sure how this would fit in with the current structure of SE.   Oftentimes after asking a question, maybe after an hour or so, I end up finding the answer I needed somewhere. And it comes time for me to answer the most difficult question of all: do I delete this question, or do I keep it in case someone answers and others may benefit from it. The problem is, if I don't delete it and no one answers, my acceptance rate goes down. So usually I'll just delete it.  However, sometimes I fear that someone is typing a really really long answer to my question since itäs only been an hour, and so I imagine the nightmare that person experiences when they find out their essay will be gone to waste. Overall, this never-to-be-seen-again answer could have benefitted many people had the question remained.  Since SE has gone "live-happy" lately, where answers and comments refresh live, I thought it might be interesting if the original asker of the question (or anyone else for that matter) could see how many people are currently responding to the question (just count, not necessary to display their names). This way, if I know someone is replying, I won't delete the question, and others can benefit from it.
88748
I was reading a question and found myself very confused. I saw that it had been edited recently by a 10k rep user and looked at the edit chain.    It seemed to me that the clarity and intent of the question was made substantially worse by the most recent edit. I don't know if this was just a one-off mistake by the high rep user. I could roll back his change to the previous version, or improve on it, but it seems like there might be a need for some kind of flag / reporting option as well - if this user has a history of misinterpreting questions and editing them for the worse, (and these hypothetical flags accumulate) should something change about their ability to edit with out review? Should I comment on the post with a request for the user to undo or fix their own change?  Not sure what my best option is.  I had initially left the post out of the question as I didn't want it to be a "I'm calling you out bro!" or a shaming kind of thing, but since it was requested and upvoted :    I think that the changes he made to the first paragraph (particularly adding the B[i] = j line) are enough of a departure from the intent of the question that it makes it more confusing.
36185
Please have a look at . When the question was asked by the OP, it had a scope related problem in the code snippet posted in it. 2 answers were posted for that question. But after the answers were posted, a friend of mine from Stack Overflow, edited the question(not sure with what intention) in such a way that the bug in the code was gone(it actually self answered the question). Please have a look at the question revision history, where I've rolled back the question to the original state, which has the problem in place.  My question is that, should such a practice be allowed/encouraged that an edit to a question renders all the answers posted for that question, totally irrelevant? As anybody who comes to have a look at the question later, will be highly confused as to why a question was asked without any problem and there were so many answers posted to it(not everybody cares to go through the revision history)? I happened to notice that, but not everybody would notice it.
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Let's say I have a problem, and post a question on StackOverflow.  I don't get any good answers, so I end up writing my own buggy implementation, or shelving the feature entirely.  Months later, someone provides an answer.  It looks promising and gets a few upvotes, but by this point it is too late to rip out the old implementation, or I have left the job, etc.  The question is no longer relevant to me.  Do I have a responsibility as the original poster to see if this answer would have solved my problem?  Relatedly, if someone pesters me about my accept rate, is "I no longer have the ability to check if any of these answers are right" an acceptable response?
58397
I asked a  recently, looking for examples of an online tool. Per the , I answered my own question with a few examples that I had already found. I did this so that these examples would be included in the answers, along with the rest.  The question has received only down votes and insults saying that this shouldn't be done.   Should I not answer my own questions?
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When is it reasonable/recommended to add another answer when I have already added one? My doubt comes from  that I  although I find later that the question was not complete. I found a way to solve the problem and was going to post it when I got the "add another answer" question.  So, should I post a new answer in this case or edit the somewhat faulty one? Better yet, when is it appropriate to post another answer?
123421
This has happened to me at least 3 times in the past few weeks. Basically, a user asks a question. I put some time and thought in an answer and reply to their question. I come back a bit later to see if they have commented on my answer and I don't have any notifications. Fine then, I check my list of recent answers but I can't find it in there. Perplexed, I check my browser history and retrace the question   I'm not sure what the purpose of this is, but perhaps someone could clear it up for me? Why do people do that? Is it because they realized what the answer was themselves? In this case, they should probably post an answer and accept it, to help other people who will encounter the same problem? Maybe from the answers they were given, they realized that the question's answer was obvious, and are ashamed of having asked it? Even in this case, I still don't think they should delete the question, but instead accept an answer and thus reward those who gave time answering their question, and maybe help others with the same problem in the future.  Am I the only one seeing this or is this a common problem? I wish I could retrace all the times this has happened to me. Is there something that can be done against this?
26765
Suppose you had a question, and you really want a good answer that would solve your problem, but noticed it was already asked by someone else. However, no one has posted any answers. The question is technically considered "unanswered", but a lot of users who would otherwise bother to give a correct answer probably skip the question completely for some reason.  What should I do in this case?  One idea is to ask a new, completely identical question, in the hope users will notice the new question and post an answer there. But would that go against SE policy?     Note: This is adapted from , but that doesn't cover the case where the original question is unanswered. Also, it is not a duplicate of , as that question asks about getting attention for one's own questions, while this one and the one linked above ask about getting an answer if someone else has already posted the same thing.
24430
One of the odd patterns I've noticed on SO goes something like this:   Person A asks a question. Person B very quickly delivers the minimum viable answer, with minimal explanation. B's answer starts to receive votes for being 'correct' even though it may not actually help the poster due to its sparseness. Person C started composing their answer at the same time as B, but instead delivers a detailed, well thought out reply with examples and explanations. They receive fewer points due to the time difference since they took longer to compose their answer. Person B then later edits their answer to include more detail to a similar quality as C's. People tend to be more generous with points to the earlier answer so the effect continues.   This strikes me as a cheap way of gaming the system for points by just making sure you have a 'correct' answer as soon as humanly possible to be available for votes.  My question is whether or not this is a behavior that should be discouraged or not, and if so - what could be done about it.  If there is a consensus that this is to be discouraged, I'd like to suggest that for very new question, for the first 15 minutes or so - answers given appear in a random order, and the number of points for each are not shown (except to moderators) and only the voting arrows appear - this would eliminate this kind of pattern I've identified and encourage higher quality answers out of the gate by eliminating order effects and the first poster advantage.