I recently flagged a question for being off-topic based on its [original version](http://serverfault.com/revisions/497771/1). (Q: http://serverfault.com/questions/497771/setting-up-virtual-host-on-windows-apache) There was a clear reference to Windows 7 as a desktop OS and as the question stood it was not on-topic. 1 rep user, usual case of not reading the FAQ.

The flagging was rejected with the following reasoning by a mod, and my comment about the inappropriate subject matter was deleted:  

*declined - This was very easilly edited into an on-topic question by removing references to Windows 7*


There were two questions that I came away from this exchange with:

* **Should we be prioritizing helping new users to learn what is appropriate for the site, or turning off-topic questions into answerable ones?**  
I'm well aware of the recent meta topic on [over-aggressiveness](http://meta.serverfault.com/q/5337/152073) and how some of it stems from the never-ending tide of bad questions. The goal in this case was education.
* **When questions are "turned around", shouldn't we leave a footnote in the comments to address the original problem?**  
This isn't *"wahh my comment was deleted"* so much as *"wahh this was completely astroturfed over"*. In this case there was nothing left for the user to learn from other than the edit. Respectfully, I don't really think most of the people on the 'net will catch that hint.

There's an obvious compromise: turning a bad question into an on-topic one and leaving feedback that the original version was unworkable. But since that isn't what happened here, I thought it best to solicit feedback to make the optimal approach a shared one.