[gumoro]

Sometimes the asker is missing a concept, and it's not always impossible to comment about it and rephrase the question to make it answerable & more useful to keep for posterity. It's far from the majority of questions, but not awfully rare either. Some of those are worth salvaging.

[mark-r]

If you understand enough of the question to rephrase it, you probably understand it well enough to answer it too. Adding a middle step just gets in the way. I've answered questions like that, and it's gratifying when it turns out your understanding was correct.