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how to appeal a closed question?

I asked a multi-part question, one part of my question was a duplicate and the question was closed as a duplicate. I still want an answer for the non duplicate part. Also I feel this is a question other people will have as well and it would benefit them to have the answer.

I chose to re-edit my question and deleting the duplicate part from my question (which resulted in the question being re-opened) but I made a moderator/high rep user irate. What is the best course of action here? Also someone answered just the duplicate part of my question, I did not accept the answer because their answer did not address my main question. But the high rep user has a point that with the edit it makes the answer look not right.

  1. Ask the non-duplicate part of the question as a new question (seems like the new question might be a duplicate with my old question)?

  2. Delete the question and ask the non duplicate part as a new question (seems like it might cut down the rep on the user who answered)?

  3. Edit the question to remove the duplicate part as I have done?

  4. Something else

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Do not ask multi-part questions. First off, it dilutes the search potential of that question, and second, you risk it being closed because part of it is a duplicate.

It dilutes the search potential because unless you're really awesome at crafting titles (which plays a huge role in SEO), your question is only going to attract an audience that is looking for an answer to one of the x areas you asked about.

Also, how do you choose the 'right' answer when there are multi-part question? Answerer A might have the right answer to the first part, Answerer B might have the answer to the second part (and so on) who gets the accepted answer mark?

Finally, the expertise of the answerers may differ; so if you ask a question about the CLR, C#, IIS, ASP.NET, and ASP.NET MVC in one question, you may or may not get the expert in the tag you want (especially if you have a 6th topic in there, like WCF).

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    This. The way the original question was framed, it looked to me like the reason you cared about where CareerOverflow had gone is because you were looking for a place to ask career questions. So, naturally I voted to close the question as a duplicate of one that provided absolutely stellar answers to where you should ask career questions. I had no idea that you actually cared about CareerOverflow for the sake of it, and modifying your question after the fact is not necessarily a good idea. The other person who answered it clearly thought the same thing I did, invalidating his answer.
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Jul 24, 2011 at 3:19
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In this case, as your question contained more questions, removing the part that made the question a duplicate was correct.
Editing a question that has been closed as duplicate is possible; in the case the editing was useful to make clear the question was not a duplicate, or the editing removed the part that was duplicating another question, then the question could be re-opened. In this case, who answered the question before the edit that allowed the question to be re-open should update their own answers to reflect what the question is now asking.

This case is different from the case where the question has never been closed, and the OP changed the question, making it a completely different question; in this case, I would say that changing the question so much doesn't make sense, and instead to alter so much the original question (especially if the question has already answers), it should be better to ask a new question, if it is not duplicating an existing one.

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  • Why should your ability to change the question after I've answered it obligate me to update my answer? This is a good argument why you shouldn't alter a question that has already received answers.
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Jul 24, 2011 at 3:19
  • I don't see anything that says a closed question cannot be edited, if it has answers.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Jul 24, 2011 at 4:03

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