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Comment by fluoridation | Hacker News Reader

You're being silly. Why are "answer the question as stated" or "deconstruct the person's entire life to find their ultimate problem" the only logically consistent possible courses of action?

If someone asks a question that suggests something might have been misunderstood, there's nothing wrong with probing a little to find the reason for the question. Maybe the person really does know something you didn't, but it's much more likely that by asking clarifying questions you'll save theirs and your own time.

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I was providing a silly example but there is a continuum as you’ve identified. My point is that it’s not your place to decide how far along this continuum to go. It’s the job of the person asking the question.

I think it is your place, because it's your time being taken by people asking questions. It's an often a thankless job people do because they want to help. If you think you might be doing more harm than good by "just answering the question" you're not helping anymore, which then somewhat defeats the purpose many people are doing it. But really, the simpler reason is that, if your helping out others, your giving them your time, so they should respect it, so answering some questions while getting help is part of that respect.

Giving people something they didn’t ask for is an iffy thing to expect respect for. I like the suggestion higher up - answer the literal and then propose why it might not be what one wants to do. The dynamics of how the conversation is happening change things too. In person it’s easy to have long back and forth with detailed explanations and inquiries without taking up much of either person’s time. Online public responses it can easily waste thousands of people’s time if you insist on giving only a partial answer and that’s not really all that benevolent. Between the two (or in between) you get different answers to when an answer type works efficiently.

The person asking the question is frequently not the person with the knowledge to determine this.

The X-Y response shows up frequently on support forums where people are asking questions that show they haven't yet grasped the system they are working on.

X-Y "answerers" also show up on simple, straightforward questions there are no reasons to demand a backstory for.

X-Y answers also clog up Google search results when sometimes my problem literally actually is X and not Y.

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