How should we address chameleon questions on this site?

Question

I've run into a minor irritation here lately where someone posts a question, and I post an answer that seems to answer the original question pretty well and receives upvotes and generally positive comments.

Later on the OP or someone else edits the question and removes/changes details or more often changes the general tone of the question.

Then my answer looks out of place, or somehow insensitive to the OP and I start receiving downvotes and rather harsh comments about "not answering the question" or that I assumed information that wasn't in the question.

This has tripped me up a few times, because it isn't always immediately obvious when I read these comments that the question was radically changed.

How should I respond in these cases?

I really don't want to have to radically edit my answers in each case where someone changes their question, largely because I can see a slippery slope problem there. We don't want people going "I don't like the answers I'm getting, so I'll change the question"

In one case I responded to a negative comment by linking to the version of the question I answered in the revision history, but that feels like burying the lead.

I'm not sure if we should be rolling these edits back, but it would seem reasonable when the new question invalidates answers.

Examples:

How do I address my mother's concerns about my boyfriend's smoking?

How do I tactfully avoid interacting with a person I meet on the way to work every day, at a subway station?

Related:

Exit strategies for "chameleon questions"

Answer 1

In general...

1. If questions are closed quickly, this problem goes away. (Questions can be edited and later reopened).

2. If someone is adding details to a question that change how the question should be answered, then that is a sign that the question did not have enough detail to be properly answered originally. Again, close, ask for clarification, reopen, and then write a proper answer.

3. Minor changes in the tone shouldn't invalidate an answer. If minor changes do invalidate an answer, then the changes aren't that minor.

4. If information is removed through editing, it is still acceptable to reference that information in your answer (so long as it isn't personally identifiable information). For example, if someone posts a question with a lot of curse words, and the curse words are edited out, and you think it's significant that the OP used curse words, feel free to reference that in your answer.

Looking at How do I address my mother's concerns about my boyfriend's smoking?, it seems to have been edited as a result of comments asking for clarification. Which perhaps is a sign that the question could not be properly answered until those clarifying questions were asked, since we weren't getting the full story. Which perhaps is a sign that the question should have been closed, then reopened.

To be honest, I don't care to much about any answers that make it through before the question is closed. The people writing these answers need to learn better before writing answers to questions that are unanswerable. Hopefully after one or two times people will learn and stop writing answers. If the now-invalidated answers are cluttering up the question, feel free to delete them. Otherwise, leave them be, or if you're feeling particularly nice ping the writer to tell them that the question changed.

Answer 2

I think we should try to prevent them from becoming chameleon questions in the first place.

Disclaimer: We will probably never be able to do this completely, but what follows is what I think to be a good start/ best practice.

• Like @Hamlet said, part of the problem can be solved by quickly closing questions. But this requires a consensus on what should and shouldn't be closed. And a large user base that can vote-to-close quickly if necessary. We need more meta questions to determine our scope, and to determine what is and what is not welcome here, to fix this. As we narrow down our scope, situations like the one in the second example question are hopefully occurring less often.
• I like the comment under the second example question, telling the user that the question is being discussed on meta. I think we should do this more, and even expand it a little to invite the OP of a question to take part in the discussion. And we should be careful not to vote to reopen before the meta discussion is finished, and the question addresses all the feedback meta generated.
• We're here to teach user's how to fish (in my opinion) and not to throw them a fish. This means to me, that we should not edit other person's questions into a chameleon question. Correcting spelling or grammar is okay, removing offensive language is so as well. Editing a question to such an extent that it invalidates existing answers is something an OP should do, not us (see the subitem). When the question is closed we can give OP feedback and guidance, and I think this also is where the sandbox suggestion comes in. Although I'm not sure how we are going to get new users to use it. OP's have a lot of time to improve their question based on our comments once a question is closed.
  • Subitem: I've found this link on meta that contains useful information on when and how a question should be edited by other users. I've based this point on that: "to clarify the meaning of a post without changing it". So the community should not be the ones editing questions into chameleon questions.
• I think there might always be questions that are closed after they are answered. In this case, it's in my opinion up to the OP of the post to notify users if the question is reopened after extensive editing. Sadly, we can't completely rule out disagreement on what is and what isn't a clear question. So, if a question is edited to deviate far from the original question (especially after being closed and reopened), please take your losses gracefully.
  • Edit your answer to say that it's no longer appropriate after the edit, and delete it
  • Or edit your answer to take into account the recent changes
  • Or leave a comment to your answer/edit your answer, stating that the question has since changed, and explain why your answer was valid to begin with.
• That said, I think it's fair to complain if a question is edited to such an extend as to become a chameleon question AFTER it has been reopened. We don't expect extensive edits to a reopened question since, after all, the reopened question should be good enough. If a reopened question is attracting a lot of comments and close-votes again, this is a sign that the reopened question probably wasn't good enough after all. I think this is closely related to down-voting sooner, in that we need more experience with our scope to determine wether a question is good enough or not.

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Especially the third point is important here. Since in the first example, the OP of that question did edit this question into a chameleon question, I think we could be

• Either leaving a comment to OP after the edit, that this is a big change and to ask them to notify all current answers that the question has been changed (or at least those answers that are based on edited parts of the question)
• Leave those comments ourselves. This way, answerers might get feedback quicker.

As for the second example, these edits should have been done by the OP herself, after the question was closed, and should have taken into account the comments/questions the original question generated better (in my opinion). See again point three, and it's subitem. We should not edit a question to such an extent that the original meaning changes, that is only for an OP to do.

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I agree with some users that the second example was answerable in some ways before all the editing. I can see why people were hesitating to close it, or wrote an answer. After all, there was a frame to challenge on that question. But if you really narrow the original question down, it came to 'I don't want to interact with this new-vendor, how do I dismiss him' with a lot of fluff about being afraid, police that should not be trusted, and acid attacks. I'd like to refer you all to the revision history of another question by op on workplace.se.

Here, the original question was edited shortly after posting (within 3 hours), and just removed all the fluff. I think we can learn from that. If we had done that right away, the question would have become a lot more the obvious duplicate of the same question it's now being vtc'ed for. And then we could have just closed the question as a duplicate, without all this hassle.

And we could have worked from there, together with the OP, to create another question that would not be a duplicate, and that might help her with her real problem. Because right now, her real problem is being overshadowed by well-meant edits and meta-discussions, lingering opinions based on previous versions of the question and users that are pissed that their carefully crafted answers are no longer of use. (And I'm willing to admit that except for the answer one, I'm also guilty!).

Answer 3

If a question is answerable before the major edit (that deviates from the original question), then the edit invalidates high quality answers, I think we should advise the OP to ask a new question.

If they do that, that's great! If not, invalidated answers should be deleted by the owner if they don't want to revise to the current question.

However, we should aim to preserve high-quality answers!

1. Post a new question, with the same wording as the original question
2. Link to the revision of the question
3. Optionally, give a short explanation why this is different from the linked question.
4. Ideally, move the invalidated high-quality answer to the new question.
   If this cannot be done _{I believe this is called "merge"?}, then delete the original answer, and post the copy of the answer on the new question.

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Advantages

The OP

He gets to get answers useful to his problem.

The Answerer

This prevents downvotes and negative comments, while still preserving the upvotes, even though his answer is deleted.

The Community

High-quality answer(s) is preserved and will be useful to other visitors in the future.

Answer 4

It is my opinion that if a question clearly has defects it should be edited and improved even at risk of invalidating some answers or some parts of answers. Why? Because it will be read by future visitors to the site, and a flawed question cannot be well-answered.

Of course radically editing the content or scope of a question so as to change it entirely is not good, but in the cited recent 'how do I avoid this newspaper vendor' question, my editing retained most of OP's relevant content; improved the question by removing apparently biased statements and less relevant details; and requested users to give good advice for negotiating a delicate interpersonal situation, rather than focus on OP's motivations and assumptions.

It was also necessary at the time because that Q had been closed and such editing would have been required to convince users to reopen. Which it was, and has since inaccurately received 3 votes to close as a duplicate of an unrelated question.

The objections in comments were to the tone of the question and some users felt that OP was biased against the newspaper vendor for no reason, calling her fears irrational. The purpose of editing was to make it neutral in tone and less biased towards an unknown person. No major changes were made but the tone became neutral, invalidating at least one answer. My editing was entirely based on OP's statements and also well-approved by OP.

If there are worries about 'invalidating answers' I am willing to edit in a disclaimer such as

New readers should note that this question has been substantially edited in focus and tone (but not in content) since the earliest answers were posted. Please keep in mind that the members who kindly wrote these answers are not responsible for any confusion caused by the later changes that were necessary to improve this question to community standards.

So why not improve a question that has potential? I was looking at the good generic Q buried there (not specifically asked by OP but part of women's life experience everywhere): "I had a bad experience with a man and feel that women are not safe anywhere. How can I tactfully avoid interacting with this unknown man I keep meeting every day on the subway on my way to work?"

I couldn't ask that question myself because I am not a woman. So the next best thing to do is to help save this similar question from getting closed repeatedly for dull reasons.

I am glad to see that @Kate Gregory wrote a great answer to this question after I had edited to help get it reopened. So I am less concerned now if it gets closed again, this time as a duplicate.