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Comment by sirclueless | Hacker News Reader

I think part of the point here is that you are not just answering OP's question, which may or may not be an example of an XY problem. You're also answering everyone who searches answers using similar terms to those the OP used.

For example, let's say the title of the question is, "How do I reformat my hard drive on linux?" and the body of the question is "I accidentally screwed up my upgrade of Ubuntu by <doing XYZ> and now it won't boot. Can I reformat the hard drive and install again so I can boot?" If your answer is "Are you sure you need to reformat? Have you tried <solution to XYZ>?" then you may be solving OP's root problem but you will be making a useless landing page for anyone searching "How do I reformat a hard drive on linux?"

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That is a good point and not easily solvable. I think the best approach is the OP updating the question title and text to reflect the actual problem they need a solution for, eg. <Ubuntu will not boot after doing XYZ.>

I don't think it is helpful to answer the literal question rather than the actual problem, since this is optimizing for a hypothetical future reader at the expense of the actual person having a problem. After all, the future reader might also have the same problem as the current user.

>since this is optimizing for a hypothetical future reader at the expense of the actual person having a problem

Which is fine because there are N potential future readers but only one OP.

I don't agree with this line of thinking. Helping the user at hand means you help at least one person, and probably others which might have the same problem. This is the purpose of the site! The OP is supposed to select one of the answers as "accepted", if the answer solved their problem.

You suggest answering "the wrong question" would help more users in the future. I don't see why that would be likely.

N could be less than 1

Again, you're assuming the question is "wrong". But how likely is it that every single person who asks that question is wrong? With your line of thinking you help the OP and anyone who gets in the exact same situation as the OP but no one who actually needs the answer to the question that was asked.

If you're worried about it then just answer exactly what was ask and follow your strategy. But please don't simply do your strategy because it's a real pain for those of us who end up having to move off the beaten path from time to time.

I should not have used the word "wrong", of course someone would nitpick that. I mean the Y in an XY question.

My point is just you should try help the person at hand with their actual problem, the X, and then clarify the question title to reflect the problem they need help with. It is easy to see if an answer have solved the actual problem - the OP selects the answer as "accepted".

If another person have a different problem which happen to be Y they will ask that as a question and get help for that. Everybody is happy.

I get really miffed when I see someone answering the literal question even when it is clear that the OP have a different problem and is just not knowledgeable enough to put it in the technically correct terms. I guess it is an effect of the education system when people think it is better to provide a useless but technically correct answer, than actually help people who have a problem.

Answering both X and Y is fine of course, and probably the preferred.

>and then clarify the question title to reflect the problem they need help with.

How many times have you seen that happen? Further that only occurs in an XY situation where the question was wrong. I've been hit by cases where the answer was "don't do that because it's bad". Well, I know that and I know why it's bad but I also know that I have to do it anyway. What now? You couldn't change the question in that case because they asked what they meant, they were just told that they were wrong (and they were).

>I get really miffed when I see someone answering the literal question even when it is clear that the OP have a different problem

And I get just as miffed when they don't because of all the times I get burned by people behaving as you want and then I can't get that same answer answered and have to go through even more pain (it was painful enough to be forced into the situation) to figure it out for myself. I have basically no karma on SO because when I get some I use it to vote down such people.

>Answering both X and Y is fine of course, and probably the preferred.

Here we can agree.

Good point. If they really asked what they want (it wasn't an XY question), I don't think "don't do that because it is bad" should be accepted as an answer, since it isn't, and it doesn't help.

It is the OP which decides what it the accepted answer though, but the community should not upvote unhelpful answers.

So, fix the question.

If the question is "why do I get a segfault?" and we find out he's trying to write C code to title-case a string in-place, and he's passed in a string literal, we can edit the question to "Why do I get a segfault trying to modify a string literal?" or similar.

If the objection is that answering the real question will confuse people, then make the question match the correct answer.

In such cases where the OP and the community agrees, reformatting the question would avoid making a useless landing page.

Or the best answer follows the "here's how to do what you asked, HOWEVER: <detailed description of actual problem and solutions>"

>In such cases where the OP and the community agrees, reformatting the question would avoid making a useless landing page.

And if the question is 10 years old the day I need to reformat my linux hard drive? The OP might not even still be alive. Certainly there will be resistance to rezzing a 10 year old thread to make the question more general.

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