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See this question. I know it's off-topic because it lacks an auido/visual artefact from the game but I do know the answer.

I answered it in this case, but I'm wondering what's the right thing to do.

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  • 1
    I've just added a comment in the past for this kind of thing
    – Elva
    Apr 2, 2015 at 9:18
  • @kevinvandervelden: A Comment To The Past
    – badp
    Apr 2, 2015 at 10:40
  • Suuuuurree, something like that. More like, in the past this thing has come up and I just added a comment.
    – Elva
    Apr 2, 2015 at 11:06
  • Comment saying that you know the answer but can't help because obeying rules made years ago is more important than helping people.
    – Comic Sans Seraphim
    Apr 2, 2015 at 14:59
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    In this situation, I would (and have) comment with the answer. We're not here to be dicks, but answering it and that answer receiving votes / accept makes it more difficult for the community to clean up the undesirable question. It's also much less likely people will take comments containing the answer on these questions as an indication that these sort of questions are welcome and use this as internal justification to ask their own / rampage when they don't get an answer.
    – TZHX
    Apr 2, 2015 at 15:21

1 Answer 1

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TL;DR
You can comment or answer but if you answer make sure that your answer is on-topic.


Keep in mind that Answerable != On-Topic. There are a lot of questions that are answerable by some or even most of the people on Arqade but that doesn't make them on-topic.

Helping other users or visitors of this site should be one of the main goals of Arqade and just because something is off-topic it doesn't mean that you're not allowed to help.

Answering an off-topic question isn't bad practice in my opinion and if the question is closed leaving a comment to help the asker is also a nice thing to do. You can even invite them to a chatroom if you want to help them with a topic that would be off-topic on the main site.

A lot of bad or off-topic questions can still attract some excellent answers so don't hesitate to write an answer to a bad or off-topic post (but you answer should obviously also be good and on-topic).

I generally tend to answer in the comments when I see an off-topic or bad post I think I know the answer to. Mostly because i'm not 100% sure if I can help (which is especially true with ITG-Questions).

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  • I would prefer just a comment, as an answer has the appearance of validating the question as being on-topic, but completely agree that our main goal should be to help people.
    – DCShannon
    Apr 4, 2016 at 16:05

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