Sometimes when I see a question out of a textbook or competitive exam, I want to post a generalization of the specs of the question. I think my situation is (probably?) similar to this.

Should I post it in a Q-A form (Answer you own question - share your knowledge, Q&A-style) or not because the problem (with its specific numerical values) has already been answered at that place? The first question I had in mind to post a general solution of was this one.

• This seems similar to what Coping with abstract duplicate questions. is trying to help deal with. I added a link there to my own question on the main site of Proving that among any $2n - 1$ integers, there's always a subset of $n$ which sum to a multiple of $n$ where I describe various aspects of those types of questions, and also included links to $15$ previous questions which demonstrate these aspects, although I know there are actually quite a few more related questions on this site. – John Omielan Feb 9 at 0:13
• Mast, one way to provide generalizations is to download Latex on your home computer, then post expository writeups on some sort of web page. Then you may call someone's attention to a relevant piece with no more clutter than a comment explaining the relevance and giving the link. – Will Jagy Feb 9 at 0:37
• @JohnOmielan I appreciate your effort on the $2n-1$ problem, but I think that it handles the issue in the wrong direction. You have created a post from which links flow out. Ideally, we should have a canonical post, and links should flow into it, i.e. related questions should be closed as duplicates of the canonical Q&A. From the point of view of making the repository of questions and answers accessible and searchable, a target node is far more useful than a source node. – Xander Henderson Feb 9 at 3:01
• @XanderHenderson Note I posted the wrong meta question link. It should have been List of Generalizations of Common Questions instead, with my link being in the "Number Theory" section. As for there being a "canonical post", my answer lists several posts which solve the general situation. However, I believe where the question is for a small $n$ (e.g., $3$ or $4$, so $2n - 1$ is $5$ or $7$), it can be more useful to use one of the questions specifically for that $n$, such as one of the posts I list in ... – John Omielan Feb 9 at 21:28
• @XanderHenderson (cont.) this answer, with other answers handling different cases. I also believe my posts can be helpful to anybody who is interested in learning more re: question variations and techniques used to solve these types of problems. As for the general "usefulness" of what I've done compared to having a specific "target" node, I'll leave that to anybody who wishes to check my post to determine for themselves. This includes updating a post or writing their own as a "target" one to use, with them being welcome to add a link in an answer. – John Omielan Feb 9 at 21:29