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According to Oded's answer to What are limitations on self-answered questions? self answered questions have the same quality requirements as "the other" questions. So if we found a question that says something like

I know that many people have opinions about how to do X but nobody explains it clearly. Please share a detailed step by step guide to do that

Then the OP posts a self-answer with a a detailed step by step guide.

Should the question be closed in spite of all the effort made by the OP on writing the detailed answer?

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Etiquette for answering your own question does not answer my question because it's about the answer and I'm asking here about the questions.

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  • "Does the question should be closed even all the effort made by the OP on writing the detailed answer?" Can you clarify- did you mean one of the following? 1) "Should the question be closed despite the effort that went into writing the detailed answer?" or 2) "Should the question be closed if the research effort is only shown in the answer and not in the question?"? I have the same question as 2, but I'm not sure which one you meant if you meant either of those. Or did you mean something else?
    – starball
    Commented Jan 2, 2023 at 7:18
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    I found other posts that seems to have strong relevancy: Is a short description of a question OK if self-answering?, and Self answer and research effort [duplicate] (closed as a dup of the previous one). Do you think either of those answers this question?
    – starball
    Commented Jan 4, 2023 at 9:17

1 Answer 1

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I think that this is about quality rather than etiquette.

From @Oded's answer to What are limitations on self-answered questions?:

The limitations on self-answered questions are the same limitations we put on questions and answers that are not self-answered.

The question needs to be on-topic, of high quality (well, certainly not low quality) and as much as possible, not a duplicate of an existing question and yes - narrow and specific, just like any other question.

If I saw a question, irrespective of whether it were "teeing up" a self-answer, that was of the form:

I know that many people have opinions about how to do X but nobody explains it clearly. Please share a detailed step by step guide to do that

I would downvote it because it asks for a step by step guide for how to do something rather than stating what you are trying to do, what you have tried and where you are stuck. In other words the question does not demonstrate research effort.

If you believe that "many people have opinions about how to do X" then I think you should link to at least some of those opinions as part of your question.

I think the question would be better asked using a form like:

I would like to do X which involves a series of steps.

I have researched how others have tried doing this at link 1, link 2 and link 3. However, I am still stuck when I try to do step Y because I (get an error | get an unexpected result | etc).

How can I do step Y?

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  • I'm not sure how useful it is in the context of the question here to focus on the specific linked example. This question here on MSE is more general (not tagged specific-question).
    – starball
    Commented Jan 2, 2023 at 22:14

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