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  • 1
    As "XY Problem" is a kind of "Use of wrong hypothesis", the Stackoverflow community must to help in show the right hypothesis... This is the focus in your "Giving Answers to XY problems"? Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 7:51
  • 2
    @PeterKrauss In a sense. That is more of an assumption (I agree the community should). I assume that someone answering the question wants to give part 3 - the right hypothesis. The trouble of XY problem lies in the wasted time. So focus of this answer is to highlight that spending time giving parts 1 and 2 up front is not wasted time but actually saves time in the long run. You are right that this answer is generalisable to the Use of wrong hypothesis. Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 9:05
  • Too often the OP takes the answer to Y and runs, without reading on or realizing that Y was the wrong solution to X. Because of this, I'd rather not given them an answer that will be misused. I'd rather risk offending them to get to the correct solution than further contribute to both bad code and flawed logic. Commented Aug 14, 2018 at 17:51
  • 1
    @Tom That's fine, in those cases the "you are asking for something that is really hard" or "you shouldn't do this, it's a really bad idea" type part (1) are entirely appropriate. Commented Aug 14, 2018 at 18:42
  • I laughed out loud after I finished reading this and checked back. Excellent answer, excellent observations, excellent leadership-by-example. Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 16:20
  • 6
    I would add that the purpose of this site is not just to help the person originally asking the question, but also to create a repository for anyone else who finds the question later. Even if Y is not the right way to do X, it may still be useful in its own right in other contexts, so answering Y can be valuable too. Commented Jul 12, 2019 at 13:42
  • 1
    This actually answers the actual question properly while others just simply stated facts Commented Oct 21, 2019 at 9:41
  • 1
    If I could, I would give this a thousand upvotes. I got a comment on my question which, although it might have been Y, led to comments including higher-level (manager-like) development plans instead of solving the question in hand. Commented Nov 12, 2021 at 13:56