Should you expand questions that are too basic?

Question

Today someone asked How to add a cck "select list" to your content type. IMO, this question was too basic, so I expanded it to How to have CCK "Select list", Checkbox and/or radio button field on my content type? (Compare it with the original one.)

When I did this, someone answered the first question without realizing that I changed the question. Now, their answer can only be 33% correct. In addition, I didn't realize they answer the first question, until I posted my answer to the new expanded question. For whatever reason, the site didn't notify me (maybe this is a bug, as the url changed).

What should I do/have done? Should I have expanded the question in the first place? Should I delete my answer? Should I roll back the OP and create a new expanded question and answer it?

Answer 1

The suggestions of how to edit a post, which are now not anymore visible to who has the privilege of editing a post, as the inline editing is used for such users, are:

• fix grammatical or spelling errors
• clarify meaning without changing it
• correct minor mistakes
• add related resources or links
• always respect the original author

If you are changing the meaning of the question, as when making it less basic, then you should not edit the question asked by another user. If it's too basic, and you think it should be closed, then you could vote to close it; if you cannot vote to close questions, then you can flag the question as report you think it's too basic to be acceptable on Drupal Answers.

As for being notified that somebody else answers the question you edited, or for which you already provided an answer, the system doesn't notify you because you are not the user who asked the question. Only the OPs get notified of any new answer and, as far as I recall, of every comments added to their question or to any of the answers provided for their question.
If you want to get notified when a question asked by another user is changed, which means both edited or answered by another user, then you can add the question to your favorites. In that case, you should get a notification similar to the one you get when you obtained a new badge; if you don't get those notifications, then looking at your user profile would allow you to notice when there are changed to one of your favorite questions: An asterisk will be added to the left of "favorites."