# Editing a question to make it more general (in presence of general answers)

Today I discovered this question: Determinant of rank-one perturbations of (invertible) matrices

There, the OP asks how the determinant of $I + vv^T$ can be computed. Nevertheless, (one of) the answers handle(s) the more general question of $\det (A + cd^T)$.

Is it OK to edit the question to ask for this directly?

My main motivation for this is that this would make searching (and finding) the nice answer easier.

Concretely, I was looking for the $\det (A + cd^T)$ case and almost closed the question after reading that the OP only asked for $\det (I + vv^T)$. Luckily, I read on.

• I would say it's OK, and I've seen it done in the past. I don't see any downsides, especially for such an old question. – Najib Idrissi Aug 4 '15 at 14:23
• A downside could be if the edit invalidates some of other answers. @NajibIdrissi – Martin Sleziak Aug 4 '15 at 14:49
• To mitigate the downside mentioned by @MartinSleziak, I'd suggest that, if one did edit a question in that manner, perform the edit so the original phrasing is still evident (e.g. "How do you solve ____; or, more generally, ____?") – apnorton Aug 4 '15 at 15:15
• Thanks everyone, especially @apnorton. I now edited the question in question. – PhoemueX Aug 5 '15 at 8:23