tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Varying a question that's been asked and answered)

Harry Gindi comments on "Varying a question that's been asked and answered" (8262)

Harry Gindi — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 07:26:49 -0700

@Kevin: Apparently a lot of programmers from Stack Overflow don't understand that "algorithm" != "useful algorithm", to use their notation.

Kevin Buzzard comments on "Varying a question that's been asked and answered" (8261)

Kevin Buzzard — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:38:44 -0700

@vipul: I would *strongly* recommend that you think before you post. If you ask a question and you get an answer that's correct but doesn't answer the question you really have, then you probably asked the wrong question. Rather than ask what to do next, why not try really hard not to put yourself in that position at all? Think of what question you want to ask, and then sit on it for a bit, and then come back to it, and decide if that's really what you want to know. If you're convinced that it is, then ask. Mathematicians are an unforgiving lot: someone asked recently if there was an "algorithm" to solve a particular problem recently and I made a logically correct, but hopelessly useless, comment, giving a genuine algorithm of the form "keep trying until it works". My point was not that this was a logically correct answer but that the questioner was almost certainly asking the wrong question, in this instance.

Andy Putman comments on "Varying a question that's been asked and answered" (8215)

Andy Putman — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:40:43 -0700

If it's genuinely different and you've given it an appropriate amount of thought, then ask a separate question. However, don't bombard MO with a bunch of similar questions over a short period of time.

vipul comments on "Varying a question that's been asked and answered" (8214)

vipul — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:36:41 -0700

This happens often to me: I ask a question, then get an answer to that question (strictly as the question is asked). Now, based on those answers, there is a slight modification of the question I would like to ask. However, that particular question already has gotten votes, answers, and the correct answer has been check marked. In such circumstances, is it appropriate to: (i) edit the question to the modified question [I'd think not], or (ii) ask the modified question as a new question, linking to the old one.

(ii) seems like the right thing to do but I don't know about the issue of whether it's fair to ask many similar questions -- since voting is done on individual questions, this might seem like an attempt to garner more votes (or try to attract more people's attention) by posting similar questions all over the place.