What do we do with ask-and-answered questions?

Question

I'm a big fan of continuing to research a problem after a question has been asked. It shows initiative on the part of the asker. At the same time, I find it incredibly annoying when people ask a question only to answer it themselves less than 10 minutes later. This shows that they really weren't looking hard enough and, in my opinion, fills the site with unnecessary spam.

A good example is this question from yesterday. The author asked the question, then answered it 6 minutes later.

Ironically, I know this question would have probably been answered with a link to let me Google that for you if asked on the regular WP forums - a practice that's been degrading the quality of the site lately.

So here's the question: what do we want to do with this kind of q&a on the site? Should we encourage people to search a minimum amount of time on Google before asking? Should we discourage answering your own question the same day you've asked it?

My concern is that this author won't accept another as "the answer" since he's already answered it himself with the correct solution. Anyone else (i.e. John Bloch's answer 1 minute later) will end up appearing as a copy-cat response.

Answer 1

I agree with your completely @EAMann and sorry to differ @tnorthcutt. I don't think it's a problem if we send them to Google first because it we follow a somewhat aggressive policy of policing really high quality answers then over time (and not too long a time) this site will be one of the top search results for practically every WordPress related question. And if my experience with Googled questions leading to StackOverflow is any experience, we'll also have the best and most relevant answers too. So if we focus on creating really quality it will be rewarded.

So yes, I think the FAQ should seriously discourage people from answering their own questions and that if they do we should close the question (can we delete them?)

In the case they do identify the answer on their own we should require the ONLY do so in the comments after their question and further they should encourage and accept others to answer it more completely for others who many have the same question in the future.

On the surface I like the idea of a waiting period but it might encourage hit-and-run questions where the user never follows up to close the loop. But if the time period is reasonable it might make sense. At least be worth a try.

I would like to add (maybe this should be another topic of discussion) that our FAQ state that by asking the question commit to following up and closing the loop to make sure the answer has as much value for others in the future as it did for them and if they can't commit to doing and they show evidence of not following up they will be notified and possibly banned (for example, without calling anyone out I noticed there is someone who has asked 5 questions recently but hasn't followed up on any of them.)

UPDATE: I'm going to add another context I was not thinking of when I wrote the above and that's when one of us knows of good question, especially one asked elsewhere on the web, and wants to post it here for everyone's benefit. In that case I'd suggest posting it as a community wiki and stating that you plan to answer the question yourself. That ways other's aren't busy doing research to help answer a question you already know the answer to. This is basically what @EAMann said in response to @tnorthcutt's answer below.

Answer 2

What if an asker's answer wasn't grouped with other answers, but was tucked up right under the question and easily identifiable as a self-answered question? That way someone else can consider the asker's answer and other answers as two different things. Plus, if some one else has a different way to solve the problem, they can post their answer, which might get higher votes than the asker's answer, and become a resource for the long tail.

This tucked-up answer is intended to be a badge of sorts that the asker didn't really research their question or make much of an effort before asking. A stigma, if you will.

I think asker answers should be grouped outside of the normal list of expert answers.

Answer 3

Should we encourage people to search a minimum amount of time on Google before asking?before asking?

No.

I can't find the reference right now, but Jeff Atwood (IIRC) made the point a while back on the SO blog that doing so would defeat the purpose of a Stack Exchange site. We want this site to be the best resource for finding answers to WordPress questions. Ideally, when people Google a WordPress question, they'd find a link to this site at the top of the results page. We don't want to tell people to go to Google, which essentially means they'll find the information somewhere else.

Answer 4

As another sample of this category of questions, I could use some advice on this question as I don't trust my own objectivity. I asked the question, and an answer was provided. Even though the answer pretty much duplicated code I already had, it did get me looking for "featured images" which made everything that followed possible. There was a ~2 hour delay between asking the question, and posting the solution.

So, what would you do? Mark my final code summary as the accepted answer? Vote to close? Leave it alone?

This doesn't exactly fit as an "answer" to EAMann's question, but it didn't warrant its own question, either.