Is it good or bad practice in this community to update a question you have asked with a follow up describing the outcome of the implementation?

Many of the questions asked here are about problems that the OP has. The community takes what information about the problem statement and requirements that the OP (hopefully) gives and a few proposals are put forth. These ideas may be debated or the OP might provide additional clarification that makes one solution seem better than the other for whatever reason.

What I haven't seen yet (in my two months on the site) is feedback on what the actual end result was. Did the feature get implemented using one of the answers in the thread? Did the idea stand up to the test of production or was there a weakness or incorrect assumption?

Bringing that result back to the question as an "update" makes the question the more valuable to future users who find the question in the SERP.

I'm still learning the social norms for this board, so I'm wondering if this is in-bounds or out-of-bounds in this community?

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    I swear there was another question or two about this exact situation but I can't find it. IMO it's fine if you just include it after a thematic break or something, it's good to know the end result with stuff like this – Ben Brocka Dec 10 '12 at 16:48
  • Yeah I was looking to see if this question had already been asked on meta but I didn't see it anywhere. I don't have a specific example of my own, I was just asking for future reference. I told another user that I was interested in seeing what they ultimately implement, which is what prompted my Q. - Thanks – Charles Wesley Dec 10 '12 at 16:51

Yes, it would be beneficial to update the original post with any outcomes, especially if it's more than simply "yup, that worked" (I'd put that as a comment on the relevant answer instead).

Please add the update as a addendum to the original question though, don't simply edit/revise the original question, as the answers as written rely on the state of the original question text for context.

  • So you would edit the question and put the outcome at the bottom, leaving the original in place? Would you discourage posting an answer with the outcome to the thread? – Charles Wesley Dec 20 '12 at 21:44
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    If the solution outcome doesn't match any answers, then post a new answer detailing what you did. If the solution outcome matches or was mostly based on a provided answer then post it as an update under your question. – Erics Dec 21 '12 at 2:25

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