A question asks about case A. All the answers explain the rule with respect to cases A and B which have the same rule (or at least no one has yet to find a distinction). Is it appropriate to generalize the question post facto to ask about A and B, or leave the question alone because it is technically perfectly fine as is?
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2This question could be improved by a specific example.– Ze'evCommented Jul 22, 2012 at 23:19
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1@Ze'evFelsen Actually I disagree. I think we should agree on a theory and debate its application in each circumstance. Any example I give will bias answers in a certain way. Besides, maybe no example exists yet?– Double AA ModCommented Jul 22, 2012 at 23:22
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2Downvoter, what are you disagreeing with? That we should discuss this? I didn't take a stand in the question.– Double AA ModCommented Jul 22, 2012 at 23:22
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The official SE answer to this is yes. I'll see if I can find the blog post.– HodofHod ModCommented Jul 22, 2012 at 23:24
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@HodofHod That would be quite helpful of you. (And see my above comment about 'yes' being ambiguous here.)– Double AA ModCommented Jul 22, 2012 at 23:25
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@HodofHod Do you know where the blog is? Lo.Yodeya has disappeared– b aCommented Jul 22, 2012 at 23:52
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1@ba I referred to the SE blog, see my answer below. As to the blog formerly at lo.yodeya, I don't know.– HodofHod ModCommented Jul 22, 2012 at 23:53
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an example: judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/17977/…– MenachemCommented Jul 23, 2012 at 21:56
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@Menachem I was just thinking that. Go ahead!– Double AA ModCommented Jul 23, 2012 at 23:18
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@DoubleAA: I just voted the older one as a dupe of the newer one.– MenachemCommented Jul 23, 2012 at 23:25
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1 Answer
From the StackExchange Blog:
The editing feature is there so that old question/answer pairs can get better and better. For every person who asks a question and gets an answer on Stack Overflow, hundreds or thousands of people will come read that conversation later. Even if the original asker got a decent answer and moved on, the question lives on and may continue to be useful for decades.
[...]
It is OK to edit a question to make it more general. With the power of editing comes the power to take someone’s selfish, very specific question, and edit it a little bit until they’re asking the more general question that hundreds of people encounter. For example, if someone asks, “I set up a web server at home but I can’t access it from work,” it’s OK to rewrite the question as, “What things should I check when a web server running at home is not visible on the Internet?” In fact, sometimes selfish, stupid questions of the “do my homework” variety can be easily edited into a form where the answer will provide an extremely valuable resource for the internet at large.
