Late extensions to questions asking about differences between words?

Question

Not too long ago a user asked for the differeces between four similar words. The question was answered three times within two days with relatively good answers, albeit none accepted.

A further two days later, he realised, that there is another similar word and decided to extend the question to include that fifth word.

I commented saying that his question was pretty old, had gotten answers and was probably out of sight for most people now. I also felt that this turned his question into a ‘moving target’ aka hard to bullseye with an answer. I haven’t, however, found a general policy on the topic so far.

• Should this kind of late extensions be allowed?

  • If not, how should a user who realises that their question didn’t include all the related terms and wants to add more act? Ask a new question with reference to the old one?

  • Also if not, what should we do to askers that do that? Rollback and add a comment? Just comment?

Answer 1

Nobody’s bothering to answer, so I’ll post my thoughts as an answer and see if it gets any votes.

• Additions to questions are, of course, reasonable and allowed if posted within the first few hours, ideally before any answers have been given.

• If there are no answers, late additions can still be allowed, as it shifts the question back up in the active questions tab.

• If there are already answers, late additions should not be allowed and the question edited back to its original form. The asker should be asked to create a new question referencing back to the old one instead. The edit should be explained in a comment, ideally pointing to this meta post.