Comment by Semaphor
3 years ago
There’s always the running joke about people on SO claiming it’s a XY problem when it’s not. Alas, I encounter so many times when the OP did have an XY problem, the answers then solve the actual problem, but I never had an XY problem, have the problem in the title of the post (which no one solved or cared about), and leave without a solution. I wish moderators would adjust titles on SO questions that get updated to a different question.
And funnily enough, all threads for this submission have the complaint about the reverse XY problem at the top…
Yeah, you really need to think two steps ahead and write out specifically "My problem is Y and not X, and the difference is ..."
I find good success writing in my question "question is similar to <already answered question> except I need this and that, which that solution doesn't provide"
I meant it the other way. I encounter so many questions on SO, where the problem was X after all. And then X gets solved, everyone is happy. Besides me, who gets it as a search result for problem Y that no one, including the OP, actually was interested in solving.