[TillE]

I've had this issue a lot, usually secondhand (search for a solution to X, find a bunch of forum posts that scold about X being bad and wrong even though it is absolutely the correct approach in my scenario).

But realistically, any kind of programming Q&A forum is absolutely flooded with beginners and dolts and literal children, so if you've somehow decided to be a power user that answers a million questions, it's probably reasonable to assume that they really want Y.

[lolinder]

It might be reasonable to assume of the original asker, but it's unfair to the dozens of people who follow in their footsteps and find their question years later.

I've lost track of the number of times that I need to X (even though I know Y is an option that is probably better in most circumstances) and had to dig through dozens of "do Y instead" answers before finally finding something helpful. More often than not the original asker actually accepts Y as the answer and thanks the responder, but now the search space for X is polluted with yet another non-answer.

I agree with another commenter downthread—the best response when you think you're looking at an XY problem is to answer both X and Y. That way you can be sure that the naive asker is set on the right path (if they are in fact naive), but you're still logging the answer to X so that searches for it don't become useless.

[falserum]

> but it's unfair to the dozens of people who follow in their footsteps and find their question years later.

Exactly.

In similar fashion: duplicate questions are alternative ways how people can find the question. (I.e. Useful for later searchers)

[MisterSandman]

I can see you’re getting downvoted but I 100% agree. StackExchange is so, so bad at this - they will close a question because there’s like a 75% overlap with a different question.

[falserum]

Duplicates could be useful if they are properly linked with earlier question/answer. (Something like “import answer” could be useful)

[dap]

Even in a forum that's mostly beginners, you can still construct responses that are appropriate for both beginners and experienced users. There's no need to assume.

[zettabomb]

Simple questions are free and make everyone's lives better. "Hey are you sure you need X? Have you tried anything else?" (or something to that nature) takes seconds to type. The answer isn't much longer, "Yes, I tried A, B, and C but they don't seem to be appropriate for my problem. X meets my requirements but I can't get it to work" (again, or similar). It's beneficial to the responder (don't spend unnecessary time answering the wrong question), beneficial to the asker (perhaps it really IS an XY problem, and you can help show them a better way, or if it isn't they don't get frustrated with someone mistakenly answering Y), and better to all future visitors who now understand enough context to determine if reading further is going to help or not.

[whatevertrevor]

Agreed. What is usually not useful is making implicit assumptions instead of communicating explicitly.