Should questions that are too specific go unanswered?

Question

My question is about questions that only really help one person. I answered this question and I am not sure if I should have. He has an attempted Minecraft command, showing he was trying. The question has an answer. The OP was happy with my answer based on the comment left.

The answer was a very large, very specific command. Due to the length of the command, I am not sure how useful it will be to anyone else.

I have searched meta for 'too specific' which also lead into 'too localized.' I found a few questions on the subject but none of them answered my questions.

1. Should I not answer questions like this?
2. If not, what should I be doing? (Flag, comment, skip)

Answer 1

No, we should not be intentionally leaving questions open and unanswered. Too localized was removed as a close reason in 2013, so "this question is not likely to help somebody else" is not, by itself, a reason to close a question.

Whether or not you want to spend your own time answering a question like this is really up to you. We shouldn't intentionally say "this question should not be answered", but we're also not saying "Unionhawk, you're a bronze minecraft-commands user, it is your job to answer this".

Answer 2

The question you provided as an example is basically yet another reason why the answer to your question is no. I mean, look at it: The question itself is certainly of no use for anyone else. But, as dly's answer points out well, the actual issue this person had is a very common one. Quite few people know that NBT data of items in filled chest slots needs to be wrapped in a "tag" tag, and most people do it wrong the first time they use filled chests containing objects with NBT data. This way, and also for the reason that dly pointed out very well what the issue was (and also because of the helpful tips dly included), while answering the question for itself is only useful for that one person, dly's answer is very useful to many.

Of course, answering the question does not provide any guarantee for such a situation. The case shows very well that, in order to be useful to many, specific questions have stronger requirements to the quality of the answer. An answer like yours on the same question might have been very useful on a broader question, but on a question as specific as this one it's of no use for anyone else. The way dly answered it is the right one: Providing information for more general cases, while at the same time showing how to apply them to this specific case. It's not about answering specific questions or not - it's about giving good answers to them.

EDIT: Oops, my bad. I messed up which answer was which one. Anyway, you can learn a lot from dly's answer. I must point out, though, that your answer is still good - it answers the question. dly's answer, however, is exceptionally good, and several points that make the difference between a good answer and an exceptionally good one are what makes answering very specific questions valuable.

Answer 3

I agree with @Unionhawk's answer, just wanted to add my views on this question category.

As Unionhawk pointed out, the Too Localised close reason no longer exists due to major misuse. I do think it would've actually been a proper use for such questions.

There is an 'off-topic for the site' reason but its too bad we don't have a rule against asking questions that are overly specific to one particular user and unlikely to help anyone else. I thought there was language to that effect somewhere in site help earlier, but it seems to have been removed at some point.

Depending on the frequency of such questions, it may be worth discussing whether to ban them. For Arqade to function as a resource that helps others, having questions that don't do so are added noise. The 'easily searchable questions' we close have far greater relevance as part of the knowledge base as compared to this type.