# question edited to change meaning

The question Example of function which is not computable was recently edited by the original poster to completely change the meaning. In particular, the accepted answer is no longer reflective of the question and is misleading as an answer to the current question. I'm not sure what our practice is for this sort of situation.

• As far as I know, OP means original poster, not original poser. Do correct me if my edit was inappropriate (and wrong). – Asaf Karagila Jun 6 '11 at 15:49
• Note that I edited my answer correspondingly. – Quinn Culver Jun 6 '11 at 16:10
• @Quinn: that does help. My concern was mostly that the first sentence of your answer no longer matches the question, through no fault of yours. I think similar things have come up before. Personally, I think the new question should have been posed as a new question, rather than an edit. – Carl Mummert Jun 6 '11 at 16:24
• Yes, I agree. At the very least, the OP should make it clear when an edit changes the meaning of the question completely. In particular, the content of the original question should remain. – Quinn Culver Jun 6 '11 at 16:37
• @anegligibleperson has alrady done the same thing. He change the question from $\dfrac{\partial^4y}{\partial x^4}=c^2\dfrac{\partial^4y}{\partial t^4}$ to $\dfrac{\partial^4y}{\partial x^4}=c^2\dfrac{\partial^2y}{\partial t^2}$ in math.stackexchange.com/questions/192436 when there are completely solved answer. Please feel free to scold him. – doraemonpaul Sep 9 '12 at 22:56
• @doraemonpaul: I don't think a scolding is in order, because the person might not realize they can ask a second question. But I undid the edit and asked them to do so (I hope I did so without any negativity). – Carl Mummert Sep 10 '12 at 1:24
• I think changing questions in a significant way should be strongly discouraged. It wastes peoples effort, leaves answers that are no longer relevant and leaves the answerer in bad light. – copper.hat Sep 12 '13 at 23:06

Depending on the situation, I think we should either:

1) Roll back the change, and ask OP to add a new question, linking to the old.

OR

2) Make the edits which ensure that the original question still remains. In this current case, that is easily done. In the general case, when it might not be possible to just make additions to the question, we request OP to create a new question and rollback any changes which change the meaning of the question substantially, pointing OP to this thread.

We should also encourage people who answer to not immediately change their answer and if they do so, they only add instead of taking away.

• In the past, I have stumbled across the question after a new answer (to the new question) has been posted. In these situations, I have edited the question to note both the original and the new questions being asked. I agree with your analysis - this has seemed to work pretty well. – davidlowryduda Jun 6 '11 at 21:42
• This seems like pointless arguing that does nothing but clutter up the site. If the user accepted an answer, it's over. Learn to cope with the fact that your good intentions don't always get rewarded. – Jerry Guern Mar 8 '16 at 1:09
• I suggest also considering adding text to the top of the answer to make it explicit that the question was changed and, possibly, indicate what the difference is so anybody can understand why the answer doesn't match. – John Omielan Feb 18 at 2:34