It has happened to me a couple of times: I ask a question about a certain subject, and no answers are posted, maybe just some comments or something. Then I fix my problem on my own or find the solution by myself. Obviously, asking the question wasn't correct as I was able to solve it on my own. (At the time, I didn't know I'd solve it otherwise I wouldn't have asked.)

What do I do? Do I post the solution that I found or do I delete my question? I asked this on SO by commenting on one of my own unanswered questions but nobody answered.

Asking the question wasn't correct as I was able to solve it on my own I disagree. If your question clearly describes a problem someone else might have in the future but hasn't been asked yet, then it's a good question, even if you already know the answer! –  Kevin May 20 at 16:53

2 Answers 2

up vote 12 down vote accepted

do i post the solution that i found


And then when able (I seem to recall a two day delay before being able to accept your own answers) you select it as the answer.

For an example (by me): How to Force an Exception from a Task to be Observed in a Continuation Task?

Reasoning: SO is a resource for finding solutions, in the future others may face the same problem, but now they have an answer waiting for them.

Ok, thats what I imagined, just i was suprised at how many unaswered questions there are, because if people always did this there would be very little unaswered questions, because in the end, we always find the solution, one way or another. –  Gary Perry May 20 at 8:31
@GaryPerry I think there are a lot of people coming for instant gratifications, who, on not getting it, don't follow up. –  Richard May 20 at 8:32
true, but even so there are a lot of active users that dont give there answers –  Gary Perry May 20 at 8:37


It depends. If your solution is likely to be valuable to others and you are able and willing to clearly explain the solution and show the relation between the question and the answer, then post it.

If not, then delete your question. This may seem obvious but I routinely run into self-answered questions that are of the "Duh! It was a typo." variety or self-answered questions where the posted answer seems that it could be useful to others but the user decided to put in a summary of an answer that indicates there was a problem somewhere else than what is shown in the question. For instance, the question shows some view code for a web application but the answer says "Turns out that I did not initialize my database connection properly." Maybe others would benefit from knowing what caused the initialization problem but the user is not saying.

I agree, take a look at my question, i answered it because the answer i had wasnt correct and i solved it myself thanks to that answer… Is this correct? –  Gary Perry May 20 at 9:37
I'm not familiar with flash but it looks to me that posting an answer was the correct thing to do. –  Louis May 20 at 9:40
Ok, but i just wanted to know that if someone answers with usefull information but doesnt actually solve my problem, and then thanks to that information i fix the problem, do I mark their answer as solved or I post my own with the full correction? –  Gary Perry May 20 at 9:46
If their information was useful, but did not actually solve your problem, upvote them, post your answer and mark your answer as accepted. At the same time, be nice about it. If you had to make only minor adjustments to an answer that was mostly complete on the basis of what you put in your question, then accept their answer. It is okay to still add another answer if you feel that it might be helpful to some readers. In the question you linked to the other answer is pretty terse so (again, not knowing flash) it seems to me appropriate that you added your own answer. –  Louis May 20 at 9:59

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