About closed questions

Question

I am a new member. Can I answer an unanswered closed question? If so, how? I have an answer for a closed unanswered question

Answer 1

Welcome to the website. You might want to take some time examining our help center. Click the question mark icon on the upper right-hand side of the screen and you can find it. In it there are a few of relevant such as What Does it Mean if a Question is Closed. Navigating website policy can be rather complicated, though, so let me give you a tour of most things you should know about closure:

First, the short answer is that questions that are closed or on hold can not be answered. There is an exception for people who had already started writing an answer on our website before the question was closed, if they submit their answers in a timely enough manner, but if you first encounter a question when it was closed or have to reload the page, then it can not be done, unless it is reopened.

Questions are closed when enough privileged users who have 3,000 reputation points, or sometimes moderators, believe that a question should be closed for one of a few established reasons. These include not being asked clearly enough for prospective answerers to reliably answer, outside of our established scope, when it has already been asked, it violates objectivity guidelines or if it happens to be too broad for the format. If you are wondering what is too broad, think that a comprehensive answer should be somewhere between a couple of paragraphs long to maybe a page's worth of information, depending on the nature of the question and how many answers it is likely to get.

We here at English Language & Usage only handle subjects expressly listed in our scope of Word Choice and Usage, Grammar (with a restricted meaning), Etymology (history of words’ development), Dialectal Differences, Pronunciation (phonetics and phonology, dialectology), Spelling and Punctuation.

Also, we will not handle certain subjects, even if they fall under that scope: First, note that we we have local research standards aimed at prohibiting questions that are too simple. We do not perform generalized proofreading; you have to explain what part of a sentence is problematic. We do not do literary analysis or criticism. We do not handle naming questions. We do not translate for you. We do handle some homework questions, but only pursuant to certain conditions.

Closure is not generally meant to be permanent. It is meant to be a status that puts a question on hold. We hope for questioners to address most problem by editing the questions if it can be brought back into scope. In these cases, closure is usually meant to stave off problematic answers that might not be productive towards answering the question.

If questions are not reopened then they are supposed to be candidates for deletion. Deletion rarely ever comes, and we might keep an off-topic question if it has some vindicating purpose, but that is supposed to be the general principle. We have an automated script to help remove some questions from the backlog to help with the task though.

Sometimes questions are inappropriately closed. If after studying our policies you believe that to be the case, there is some recourse to have it reopened described in the another help center subject about closing What if I Disagree with the Closure of a Question? How Do I Reopen It? Those guidelines are also helpful for trying to get a question reopened if it was closed appropriately, but edited to remedy whatever problems it had since then.

Finally, code of conduct violations have more severe repercussions than mere question closure, so above all try not to be rude.

Answer 2

The way many people here approach that situation is to put the answer in a comment.

To do this you need to have 50 reputation.

You could also improve the question and try to get the question reopened.