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I've seen the following Question/Answer behavior on a few posts now:

  1. user A posts a question
  2. user A posts an answer to that question immediately after posting the question

I'd initially thought the behavior might be a bug and flagged it as such, but it was declined with an explanatory link to a Stack Exchange blog post. It's an interesting read about trying to avoid flooding the site with the same newbie questions over and over.

However, I'm not sure if it exactly answers how we want to handle the situation I'd summarized above. Do we:

  • accept such Q/A combos to populate the site with common questions?
  • scream bloody murder if the questions are "trivial"?
  • flag such Q/A combos -- and if so, with what flag?

2 Answers 2

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It is okay to answer your question, to share your knowledge. It is even encouraged. I don't understand why you consider it to be a bug and even want to flag it.

If you haven't noticed yet, under "Post your question", there is a checkbox allowing you also to post an answer:

enter image description here

By the way, there is a great self-answered question on Apple SE. Do you think it is bad?

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  • Thanks, that first link in particular is helpful. I was mostly curious what the norms were in that situation. A priori, asking and then answering immediately means you do not, in fact, have a question. If we take the link you cited as the norm, then it suggests that we should do something approximately like the first bullet listed: welcome such Q/A combos for the knowledge they help spread.
    – Dan Mod
    Commented Oct 8, 2014 at 18:09
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    @Dan Sometimes in the process of writing up a good question, I'll do some more research and find myself able to answer it. As long as the question itself is valid, it's useful to have, as it might be useful to other people.
    – zck
    Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 16:00
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As @nicael said, yes, it's ok.

However, the front page is also our front lobby, and we want it look interesting. I would not like to see it flooded with trivial questions.
So if somebody took it upon them to self-answer every trivial Emacs related question (and we all know they are plenty :-)), I would politely ask them to take it easy.

Are we ok with that? Or would I be wrong?

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    Definitely. Honest questions posed after some attempt to find the answer (e.g., asking Emacs or Google) are one thing. Simply channeling the manual, turning stuff into "Did you know...?" questions is something else again. (Likewise, cannibalizing Emacs questions from other sites, IMO.) Questions should indicate that some research was done first, and should be closable otherwise. That criterion is fairly common on SE, AFAICT. This Emacs site should be as demanding as SO wrt showing some up-front effort ("What have you tried?".
    – Drew
    Commented Oct 10, 2014 at 16:30

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