A few days ago I posted an answer to this question. The OP accepted the answer, and even left an appreciative comment ("Thanks so much!").

Three days later, the answer was unaccepted, with no comment or feedback. I asked if there was an issue or if the answer could be improved; he responded that 'It didn't work' and that, in the meantime, he'd 'added a couple of things', including a link to a significantly different block of code in jsFiddle.

Having been burned by this before, I suggested that he post another question, as I considered it be significantly different enough from the original. He has since responded that, due to his low reputation, he has to wait a few days to ask another question, and wants me to answer it.

Obviously accepting an answer is completely up to the questioner; however under these circumstances it seems to me that I had answered his original question, and his acceptance (and comment!) suggested that he'd taken the code, used it, and it had worked... but has since changed his code, and wants another answer on the same post to a different question.

Is there anything I could or should do under these circumstances? Is there a relevant reason to vote to close? Or should I just abandon it as a potential disaster and walk away?

  • 33
    Run away! Run away fast! There's not really a relevant close reason any more than originally just because he's asking an additional question in the comments. But it's up to you to continue to help or just move on. I would suggest moving on – codeMagic Sep 18 '15 at 14:47
  • That's my feeling too. I mean, I want to help, but... I mean the guy already took away 15 of my Internet Beans. – indextwo Sep 18 '15 at 14:54
  • 3
    And internet Beans are extremely precious! I understand and I sometimes go way further than I should but sometimes you just have to walk away. Anyway, that's up to you. If the new issue is simple enough and very related then I usually will go ahead and help. If not, then I will walk away and look for beans elsewhere – codeMagic Sep 18 '15 at 14:56
  • 12
    There's a good and a bad way to interpret this. Good is when the OP accepted your solution only because it looked good but later found out that it is lacking. You'd have to look at his fiddle and decide whether your answer requires editing or is not helpful at all and needs to be deleted. Whether you actually follow-up is entirely up to you. Bad is when the OP is holding you hostage, having found a receptive ear and just throwing a completely different problem at you. Never be a hostage. – Hans Passant Sep 18 '15 at 14:58
  • 4
    Well, you should have closed the question immediately as "no MCVE", unless I'm overlooking anything. (OP circumvented the block by hiding the jsfiddle-link behind an URL-obfuscator) – Deduplicator Sep 18 '15 at 14:59
  • 1
    What Deduplicator said. Plus in cases where a user has pulled the rug from under the feet of answerers, it is trivial to roll back to an earlier version of the question if the question is substantially on SO. – Louis Sep 18 '15 at 15:02
  • Ah, that's a good point @Deduplicator - I'd read it a lot in comments to other questions, but hadn't realised no MCVE was an actual vote-to-close. – indextwo Sep 18 '15 at 15:04
  • @Louis Unfortunately because he didn't change his question (lack of rep, I'd guess), there's nothing to roll back to - it's all in comments, which makes it a bit harder to definitely do anything about. – indextwo Sep 18 '15 at 15:05
  • @indextwo Yes, that's what I'm saying, perhaps too tersely. If we insist that the question gets an MCVE by voting to close, like Deduplicator pointed out, then we ensure that if the user decides to completely change the question, we have the means to roll it back. – Louis Sep 18 '15 at 15:08
  • Looks like the user pulled the question. – DavidB Sep 21 '15 at 1:42

This is a weird situation, because technically the user didn't actually change their own question as posted here on Stack Overflow. The only reason this didn't happen is because the user didn't include the code here in the question but only on an off-site demo (which has now changed). You could try to close the question as not having all the required information for a debugging question since it is missing the code needed to reproduce the problem. But really there's nothing you can do about the (sketchy) unaccept of your answer.

Worth noting is that one of the comments that user left contains:

I have to wait few days to ask a new question. so I had no other choice

This is a sign that the new user is being rate limited, probably due to other poor questions. From the rate limiting guide, users under 125 rep are normally only limited on Stack Overflow to:

  • 1 question per 90 minutes
  • 6 questions per UTC day
  • 50 questions per 30 days

However, more stringent daily asking limits can be imposed to slow users with a history of poor questions. The fact that the user has to wait a few days is a sign that their past questions have been sub-par. As such, I think that this user is a high risk proposition, and I advise you to walk away.

In summary:

  • You answered a debugging question that did not provide all the necessary information in the SO post itself. You should have edited the code into the question or closed the question until someone else did.
  • This particular user has probably had a history of asking poor questions. That combined with the fact that they pulled a switcheroo suggests you may never be able to fully satisfy all their questions.
  • 1
    Thanks for this. I guess I'm still learning, and it hadn't occurred to me to put his code into the question rather than just accepting it via the oddly-goo.gl'd link. I should probably be more considerate to the question before answering an 'easy-looking' one. And thanks for the heads-up on rate limits - it did seem odd that he had to wait so long, but that makes sense now. – indextwo Sep 18 '15 at 15:10
  • 22
    @indextwo: Moral of the story: If it's off-site, it's out of scope. It can be very frustrating, but if we all stick together and refuse to answer questions relying purely on off-site content (and telling the OP why and what to do about it), we'll be better off. – T.J. Crowder Sep 19 '15 at 10:43
  • @T.J.Crowder Good moral, will live by ^_^ – indextwo Sep 19 '15 at 10:46
  • 4
    Unaccepts are a nuisance — but they're also a part of life on SO. It hurts for 24 hours after it happens. After that, the pain dissipates. It's sad that you need to live with it, but it is in fact necessary to do so. (And in this context, consider adding the user to your personal blacklist for the time being — people you don't help even if you could because you still don't like your last interaction with them. I don't have a good blacklist like that; I can't remember anyone who's on it for more than a week.) – Jonathan Leffler Sep 20 '15 at 18:05
  • I agree with @JonathanLeffler. Acceptances come and acceptances go. Reputation goes up and reputation goes down. You can lose a lot of points because a user who upvoted you a lot is thrown off the site! All kinds of stuff goes on. You have to learn to live with it. – matt Sep 21 '15 at 1:38
  • @T.J.Crowder - I try to bring the external content to the body of the question and then delete the external link with a swift edit. – Burhan Khalid Sep 21 '15 at 3:33
  • 2
    This is all good information and advice, except for "You should have edited the code into the question or [...]". That would usually be copyright violation. Anything you put in a question must be licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, which linked-to-but-not-posted code usually is not. So the only option is to vote to close and ask the OP to post an MCVE. – ruakh Sep 21 '15 at 14:53
  • @BurhanKhalid: As ruakh has explained, only the author of the offsite code can do that. The terms of use on Stack Overflow require that you only submit content that you hold ownership of (copyright owner, not just having the right to copy) or the content is already under a license compatible with CC BY-SA and that if you didn't write it all yourself, you properly attribute it. – Ben Voigt Sep 21 '15 at 15:38

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .