How to avoid Repositioning of Goalposts when using Improve Details bounty

Question

This question has been Locked until resolution.
"Repositioning of Goalposts" was interprited from a question using "Improve Details" bounty.

What the question has been reverted back too:
https://stackoverflow.com/revisions/12945891/11

The final revision of this question before the bounty started:
https://stackoverflow.com/revisions/12945891/10

Important to note:

• A solution was never found before the bounty, only pieces of the solution.
• The bounty was started to "Improve Details", not to ask another question.

Details were added to the question to target in on the problems, give better context, and guide users to contribute more than what was already known.

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How can I avoid a situation like this in the future - when I collect information along the way to build a better question but still want to engage a bounty to "Improve Details" of the answers?

Answer 1

In this particular case, from what I could see, there were answers that addressed the original question before you modified it to ask for optimizations.

Additionally, you made an edit specifically stating a "New Goal"; this is a highly destructive edit, which invalidates the current highest-voted answer on the page.

That said, if you have answers to the question, but want to expand the question in a way that would invalidate the answers, then don't (the bounty is irrelevant here); you should ask a new question. Specifically, in this case, you should have asked a question on Code Review, as that is the Stack Exchange site that specializes in optimizing existing, working code.