Answering my own question

Is it OK to ask and answer my own question, with the intent of showing the community how to do something useful? In this situation I would not be seeking answers to the question (unless someone has a better solution). I can't find guidelines here, though this seems to suggest not accepting my own answer in this situation.

[Richard Brown]

No, please don't do that! It's not what the site is about. You could consider posting to the newsgroup or a blog. You are likely to irritate people if you ask questions you are not seeking the answers for.

edit: clarification below as a response to Walter's answer

[Jan]

The thread was bumped by a user, who has appended a completely different question in the section for answers, which have been removed.

Answer 1

[Daniel Shub]

I say go for it. I would say write the question and then immediately post the answer as an answer. I would hold off on accepting your answer until other people have a chance to chime in with what they think might be best.

Try it with a few questions, see how you do. If your questions are good and interesting, then you will likely get multiple answers or up votes to the question. If your questions are not interesting, then you will not get any other answers or up votes (up votes to the answer say little about the question). If you are not getting answers/votes, then it is probably an indication that you should stop.

[K E]

All suggestions were useful so thanks everyone. It does not sound like it's automatically a bad or good thing, but instead requires some judgement about whether I am seeking to put something useful out there, or just show off.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

Asking questions and then immediately answering them is one of the very first things that this resource was used for. If it's good enough for Doug Hull, then it's good enough for me.

That said, we have not worked out how we would like to incorporate such postings. I started a discussion of this recently but it hasn't gone very far.

I have no objection to the creation of "how-to" postings. The overview says that the resource is "collaborative environment for finding the best answers to your questions about MATLAB, Simulink, and related products". If that involves people putting together canonical answers to problem patterns, then in my opinion that would be a worthwhile use of the resource.

[Richard Brown]

I see your point, I'd be happy if it was clearly marked as a tutorial/how-to. Either in the title, or with a well-defined tag.

And the answer should appear in the body, rather than as a separate answer - seems a bit contrived otherwise.

But a question that looks like a genuine question, but is immediately answered by the poster, is irritating.

[Andreas Goser]

The reason why Doug and others asked questions and answered immedeately was to "prime the pump" with existing knowledgebase content. Do you go into a restaurant where nobody is in?

But anyhow, the key point is to make answers findable on the web and it accomplishes the goal. There is also an easier ways to comment and further enhance - better than in a newsgroup format.

[Walter Roberson]

I would say that such posts become more socially acceptable when they represent "accumulated wisdom" on a topic.

Instead of "Here's a Problem and here is the way of solving it", make it "Here's a Problem. One way of solving it is like this, and I think it works pretty well, but other people will probably have some good suggestions."

Or instead of something that appears to be intended to show individual cleverness, do a topic survey, researching methods people used to solve the problem, and presenting some alternatives, perhaps even synthesizing a "best practices" solution.

Answer 3

[Image Analyst]

If you ask a question, and none of the answers is satisfactory, and then you, through other means such as yourself or via a friend, come up with a different and better solution then I have no problem with you posting it as an answer to your question.

If you just have a nifty way of doing something, then you might consider uploading it to the File Exchange or adding it to the FAQ ( http://matlab.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#toc) if you consider it to be universally useful and not just some niche application. If it's really something universally useful, enough to be tagged a tutorial, then you could post it in Answers, but make sure it's not something better suited for the File Exchange or FAQ. For example a tutorial on how to ask questions on the Answers forum would be good but demo code for how to do a Monte Carlo Simulation might be better on the File Exchange or FAQ.

Answer 4

[Jan]

I've done this repeatedly: I had some ideas for a specific problem and wanted to know, how others solve it. Then I'm waiting for a week and add all I know about the topic. Example: Answers: rare examples of confusing error messages, or Answers: license files from the FEX. Sometimes I add my personal answers in form of comments to the answers of others. Until today, nobody told me that he or she was bothered by this.

I assume Richard's comment concerns threads like:

 Question: "I have a problem ABC and cannot solve it..."
 Accepted Answer from the same author: "Ah well, I've done it with e LOOP".

Such threads are a waste of the time of all readers. The increase of the reputation by the accepted answer has not relation to the bad quality of the question.

[Richard Brown]

The examples you mention are not what I'm talking about - in both cases you actually asked a question seeking to get feedback from the community. If someone goes away and solves a problem subsequently to asking the question, then they should post their solution.

What I am objecting to is a scenario like this:

Ooh, I've figured out this cool way of using |bsxfun|. How about I go to   Matlab Answers:

Q) How do I solve this problem (that I think is cool) using |bsxfun|?
A) (immediately) My cool solution that is super cool

When I mention the situation being irritating, that is what I'm referring to. You take time to open the question and read it, only to discover it wasn't actually a question. Annoyance level ++

That said, if someone with a high reputation does it, I don't mind - I know that they understand the system and what's appropriate.

[Jan]

Thanks, Richard, for the clarification. I've read such threads created for "boasting" only also in this forum. But actually this forum has been created for exactly such threads, a kind of interactive FAQ, and is called "Answers" instead of "Questions" for this reason. But after the inital phase of 200 threads, this style vanished almost completely.

I think, the difference between an annoying boasting and a useful information presented in a Q/A scheme is the usefulness for others. And if I think that such a thread is useful, I'm voting it.

[Daniel Shub]

I believe you get no "reputation" points for accepting your own answers.

[Randy Souza]

Daniel is correct, you do not get reputation for accepting your own answer.

Answer 5

[Geoff]

If it really is about something cool, then I'm in agreement with the others. Go for it... People could still add their own answers if they had a useful point of view.

But if it's something mundane that shows up again and again (proving that a lot of people would rather ask a question than use the search facility / or that the search facility is not powerful enough), it'd be a pointless self-gratifying exercise.

[Walter Roberson]

Sometimes it's for the benefit of the volunteers ;-)

For example, the material I wrote about the importance of parenting all graphics operations, it bugs me that I'm referring people to a Question that is in itself irrelevant to their needs, just because it happened to be the place where the general pattern was of interest.

Okay, so it's of benefit to the people reading the material, as it doesn't side track them with having to figure out which parts of a different Question they should pay attention to. But it's also to my benefit as I'm the one that has to live with my conscience about pointing people to relevant material.