What is meta? ×
Meta Stack Exchange is where users like you discuss bugs, features, and support issues that affect the software powering all 145 Stack Exchange communities.

Say you're looking over the new questions, looking for a chance to solve someone's problem, and you see a question which is absolutely, unquestionably off-topic, or is much too localized, and it gets closed.

But you have the answer.

Should you share it anyway?

I do realize this is really a matter of personal choice, but I want to know what the community's general stance is.

share|improve this question
    
a) Preferably not. b) How do you propose to do that? Closure prevents posting an answer. Via a comment? –  Josh Caswell Jul 28 '12 at 8:04
    
I'd rather 1) write a new question based on whatever useful bits were there in the original one and 2) self-answer it. Then, I'd 3) post a comment in that "original" question, referring to a new one - to establish a link and let OP and other readers see my answer posted in a new question –  gnat Jul 28 '12 at 12:05

1 Answer 1

up vote 2 down vote accepted

You can post it as a comment, and the asker will be notified.

Comments are generally softer than answers, so I don't think you're going to get ratted on for it. At best, the user gets the answer they want, and you've helped somebody; at worst, the question gets deleted, taking the comment with it.

share|improve this answer
    
I know how, silly. I'm asking whether it's encouraged. Hence the "should". –  Aerovistae Jul 28 '12 at 8:09
    
I expanded my answer a little. –  BoltClock's a Unicorn Jul 28 '12 at 8:13

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .
http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/141467/should-we-answer-closed-but-answerable-questions?answertab=active
meta.stackexchange.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2015-27
62702
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:IDDMYNDF6JC2NUMVECZOZ3UJKUF6C2K3
<urn:uuid:55d9ced6-f85e-47fe-b550-ab8407960f82>
2015-07-06T01:41:48Z
104.16.13.13
sha1:DPKVWZ76JKN7O652XX7HESU66BPKZPHW
<urn:uuid:0f3c114b-44db-498f-bad9-18c6790934d6>
http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/141467/should-we-answer-closed-but-answerable-questions?answertab=active
length
response
<urn:uuid:7ff76610-14ea-4716-9d9c-1fc977235bfd>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-179-60-89.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2015-27
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for June 2015
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf