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by stinos 2984 days ago
It's highly presumptious to assume you know better than the person asking

For me, questioning someone's question, asking more info, pointing out he/she might be doing the wrong thing, ... does not in any way involve me assuming knowing things better than the questioner or anyone. (e.g. for all I know, the asker is way more intelligent and wise and knowing than I am, but just temporarily confused - happens to me sometimes so can happen to others) Those two are orthogonal for me, it's just my nature to always question stuff. Including myself. And this certainly helps in finding solutions. And doesn't lead to me thinking I'm better. Perhaps different sometimes, yes.

your answer should... actually answer the question that was asked, as it was asked and not doing so should result in a servere punishement.

To stick with the enalogy: while the answer 'buy lamp, take ladder, unscrew old, screw in new' might perfectly answer the question, it is in my view completely useless if it doesn't solve the problem. So I'd leave a comment asking for more info. And if someone else would already have given that answer I'll probably leave a comment saying it's rather incomplete. Because it's imo the only way to actually help the OP. Why on earth should one get punished for that? Isn't it the right thing to do?

1 comments

> it is in my view completely useless if it doesn't solve the problem.

Well, this is exactly the problem I'm describing: you're trying to solve the problem for one user when the answer is for everyone who could ever ask something similar enough to come to the page from a search engine. So ignoring the question and solving the problem might help the OP but it doesn't help anyone else who actually needed to know how to replace a lamp. In fact it's hurt them because now "how to move a lamp" is considered solved by a lot of people but the actual page with the "solution" does not contain one.

Yes I get your point, but again, in my opinion, if there's no Q/A yet for how to replace a lamp, the others seeking an answer should just ask that question specifically. The net result being both the original OP and the others are helped in a clear way. Unless of course someone comes up with an all-in-one answer to the original question laying out all possible reasons why there's no light. But that's the edge between way too broad vs specific question.