Why the false dichotomy in discussing how to respond to suspected "XY problem" questions?

Question

I read with interest https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/108061/216381 and the comment http://weblogs.asp.net/alex_papadimoulis/archive/2005/05/25/408925.aspx. I also read Do I have to explain why I am asking a question on SO? and the infamous FAQ answer https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378/216381

With rare exceptions, such as https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/97172/216381, the MSO attitude seems to be that people responding to questions have a "right" to choose not to directly answer the question in favor of an answer which basically tells the OP they "shouldn't be doing it that way". The advice all focuses on the information the OP should provide to avoid this kind of response rather than suggesting that those providing answers should be respectful of questions and not make assumptions that there is some underlying problem that the OP is trying to solve that should be addressed instead.

In rationalizing the approach of not answering the question, two "carpenter" analogies were used, one involving a question about how to cut balsa wood and the other involving a question which of two non-tool household items is better to pound a nail. In both cases, they ask the rhetorical question of whether it's better to answer the question or challenge the question.

My MSO question here is: Why do so many seem to think they have to choose between these two ways of responding? Why don't folks consider answering the question and supplementing their answer as they wish with questions, challenges, additional information, editorial opinion, etc. Not only is that more respectful to the OP, it's more respectful to future readers who arrived at the answer based on the question asked. If I do a search about how to cut balsa wood, I don't want to land on an answer that just tells me what a bad idea it is to use balsa wood in house construction.

Update: While I don't want to focus on specific examples, in response to some of the answers/comments, here's a recent one where I was the one asking the question:

• In Ruby, is there no way to dynamically define a local variable in the current context?

Although it would take me a while to uncover examples, the more common occurrences I run into are where someone shares some code and an error they are getting and ask why they are getting that error. Instead of explaining the error, the answers typically propose some other approach. Admittedly, the OP is often times satisfied with that answer and not knowing why the error occurred, but I would contend the community is the poorer for it and, as a rule, this practice unnecessarily runs the risk of offending.

Answer 1

Most people come to Stack Overflow with a question, and the second they get to the answer they stop. Doesn't matter how you explain the problem with the original premise, doesn't matter how ill advised that route may be, the second they come to the answer they stop.

That lends itself to the behaviour of posting a challenge to the underlying assumption rather than answering the question. Odds are good that if one person is approaching this subject with this particular approach, there are more and will continue to be more.

For the good of future readers, I would rather post the kind of answer that would change the line of thinking than provide an answer and some others stuff they won't read. Rarely have I come across a question of the nature you are describing where posting the answer would be anything other than allowing a faulty premise to continue.

If you did find that hypothetical question where an answer could be provided and be useful to others searching later without the constraints, then I could see posting a qualified answer... but I've just not seen the cases where that makes sense.

Answer 2

Some people do do that. I do it myself under certain circumstances.

Like so many things, whether you decide to do that is a judgement call, and depends on the context. It's not universally better.

If doing what they ask is something I wouldn't like to see, but wouldn't be actively harmful, and I can envision some circumstances in which it might need to be done, I would at least consider posting two solutions. If I would consider an answer to the question as asked actively harmful and that someone choosing that solution would be doing so because they didn't realize how bad it is and is likely to have serious problems as a result, then I would not include it.

Including both solutions is also often more effort; while there are circumstances in which it's justified, sometimes answering the literal text of the question is just wasting my time if I don't think they should do it and know that the readers are just going to use the other solution anyway.

If it's clear based on the response to an answer that an alternate solution more in line with what is literally asked would be helpful, or the OP responds indicating that the alternate solution is not possible/desirable/whatever, then you can go back in an edit in an alternate solution based on this feedback.

Answer 3

In some of the lesser visited tags, where the technology and the techniques in the field aren't so well known, I think it can be valuable when someone asks one of these kind of questions to explain in an answer why this isn't the way that such a thing would be done, as long as the answer also explains and how it ought to be done. Additionally, it can still be worthwhile, sometimes, even if just as an academic exercise, to explain how it could be done using in the unconventional way, if it is, in fact, possible.

As a recent example in the Common Lisp tags (disclaimer: link is to a question that I answered) ,a user asked how they could define symbol macros that would behave in the same way as parentheses:

• How to define symbols that will work like ( and ) by symbol macro?

The short answer is that “you can't.” The longer answer is, “you can't, you shouldn't, why would you want to anyways, but…". However, this is good opportunity to illustrate that this can be done using other parts of the API, and to point out the pros and cons of them. Perhaps that qualifies as “too broad,” but I hope that that's an answer that future users will be able to find when searching on related topics.

I think this is important for a few reasons

1. It gets the information out there as an answer, so that it can be used in the future, and maybe even to help the OP.
2. It serves as a place to point future duplicates that make the same mistake (as opposed to just closing them as lacking a minimal understanding). Even if XY questions are questions that ask for code without enough understanding, they can be frequent enough that it's useful to have some canonical answers so that they can be closed as duplicates.
3. (This might just be rephrasing the previous point) getting the "proper" answer and the "confused question" together helps other people who (mistakenly) start to follow the same approach that the original asker did.