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Suppose I did some independent investigation about some facet of Stack Overflow. I've found out some great, detailed information about a bug, and figured a post should be made.

Another user has already brought up a sub-set of that bug several months earlier. His question only covers a small portion of what is happening. My information answers the general "why" of what is happening, steps to reproduce, and also shows that the "what" is actually much greater than how he initially brought up the subject.

I want to bring the full information about the bug to light, but am unsure how to proceed. Should I post my information as an answer to the original report, even though it is not really an answer in the slightest? Should I conquer that question and restructure it to cover the whole scope of the bug instead (I personally hope this isn't the solution)? Or, if the scope of my report on the bug is past what originally has documented by a significant enough amount, is this enough to post it as a separate question (most likely linking to the original report)?

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    I think you shouldn't be meddling in their affairs, seem like they can solve this issue on their own :)
    – Ólafur Waage
    Jun 8, 2010 at 10:43
  • Pwah, I'll rephrase it. I wanted to distance myself from the concept to distance the concept from my recent activity because the question has nothing to do with that. Strange mindest, I suppose.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jun 8, 2010 at 10:52
  • What bug? Make this more concrete.
    – devinb
    Jun 8, 2010 at 14:21
  • @devinb The point was to not ask about a specific bug. I wanted to ask a general question about "There is already information about a bug X. I found a lot of new information about bug Y which bug X is a subset of, but it would probably require drastically changing the original report if I wanted to use the old post. Rather than blitzkrieg, should I post this kind of thing as a new question?" If you think that this kind of thing is too situational to have a general answer, then please post that as an answer.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jun 8, 2010 at 14:38

2 Answers 2

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Is it okay to ask a new question to expand on a previously sub-documented unresolved bug?

Yes.

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I think that you should file your own bug report (start a new bug question) and report your findings.

If it's related to an older bug, link to it.

Speaking as a programmer, that's certainly what I would want and expect from a tester or technical user. It's easier to keep things organized when all of the relevant information is in the report itself; I can always close the old (poorly-documented) related bug report as a duplicate.

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  • I'm basically following this logic here for my choice. I'll wait a bit before accepting, though, in case devinb plans to expand in response to my reply.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Jun 8, 2010 at 19:17

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