up vote 11 down vote favorite

My question was closed as not constructive, despite having some pretty decent answers. After some thought I can more or less see what was wrong with it, and I'd like to make it into something useful. Is it okay if I edit it completely, slightly altering it's meaning, if the answers given will still be relevant to the topic?

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For the record, I voted to close that question because it has nothing directly to do with system administration. How much to charge for a facility or service is a business decision. We are not here to reverse engineer business decisions, regardless of whether or not there is a technical reason for them. – John Gardeniers Nov 15 '12 at 21:14
Thanks for the update. I reckon that if I asked instead about the parameters in which datacenter and consumer broadband differ, it would be more relevant to a sysadmin's job, so I will probably try with that. – odemarken Nov 16 '12 at 7:59
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Worded right that should be perfectly acceptable. – John Gardeniers Nov 16 '12 at 11:58
I had a shot at it here. Feel free to improve the wording if needed; English is not my first language. – odemarken Nov 16 '12 at 12:02
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Your English is a lot better than that of some of the people on SF for who it is their first language. ;) – John Gardeniers Nov 16 '12 at 12:17
Instead of voting to close I've upvoted your new question. – John Gardeniers Nov 16 '12 at 12:19
With the new question and the edits made to it, I think this might make a canonical question on connection types, as it could be use to a sysadmin of a small business type network trying to make the step up to more professional services. – RobM Nov 17 '12 at 12:06

2 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

This is really three questions:

Is it acceptable to edit a question that got closed before any answers were accumulated?
Absolutely.
To be blunt, if it has no answers the question was probably closed because it was crap. The comments may even be asking you to edit it so it's a good question and we can answer it. Fix it and let us know so we can reopen it if it's been reformed into a good, answerable question.

Is it acceptable to edit a question with a bunch of answers on it in such a way that slightly alters its meaning?
Maybe.
Like @MadHatter said we'd really prefer if you asked a good question the first time, but sometimes new information comes up (or someone asks a question in a comment that changes the way you look at the problem), so edits happen.
Editing questions means that people have to come back and fix their answers to take into account the new information. If your edits are going to require a lot of effort from the people who answered your question it may be better to just leave the original closed and ask a new one with adequate detail.

Is it acceptable to edit a question with a bunch of answers on it, in such a way that changes its meaning substantially?
Maybe.
If there are several answers and editing your question completely invalidates the answers, it's probably best to ask a new question.
If there's one or two answers go ahead and edit but leave comments on the answers so the authors know the question got edited and can revise or delete their answers as appropriate.

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Thanks, I accepted this answer as more generally useful IMHO, as @MadHatter's refers specifically to my case. – odemarken Nov 16 '12 at 8:00
up vote 8 down vote

Interesting question. I was fairly heavily involved in your original question, both in answering it (to try to demonstrate that the entire question was founded on incorrect data) and I then voted to close it (since it increasingly seemed to be unanswerable once the error was removed). I'm not sure how you could "heavily edit" that question without making the answers irrelevant, and my guess is that it's unlikely the old question will get re-opened, so no new information will be posted as a result of your edit. My take is, if you think you have a better question to put to us, why not start a new question (though please do read the FAQ first!)?

But the content on this site is licensed under cc-wiki with attribution, which is posted clearly at the bottom of every page. So if you decide to ignore me and go back and completely overhaul the original question, then whilst I think that's not as helpful as posting a good new question, I don't think I can say it's wrong.

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Well, I guess that what I really wanted to know when I asked that question was, "How (in terms of what parameters) is broadband service that you get in a data center different than what you get in your home or small office". (I also made a wrong assumption about the price, but that only became clear to me AFTER you pointed out that home connections don't guarantee you data throughput - so, after a partial answer). Now, if you still care ;), do you think the above would be a valid SF question? If not, would it be more appropriate for SuperUser? – odemarken Nov 15 '12 at 17:12
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By no means am I the Glorious One True Guardian of SF (!), so you should probably ask questions that seem good to you! But in any case, I think there are some good, concrete answers to the question you pose above, so why not ask it, and we'll see what people have to say. – MadHatter Nov 15 '12 at 19:41

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