I’ve observed four kinds of answerers on Stack Overflow:
The Competitor
The competitor will defeat all the other answers on the field of combat.
The Helper
The helper wants to help the asker with their problem.
The Canonicizer
The canonicizer wants to make sure no one will ever have to ask or answer a related question again.
The Challenge Seeker
The challenge seeker is looking for interesting problems to solve.
It’s important to note each have notions of question quality. The competitor just wants enough to scratch out an answer before anyone else gets to it to eek out some sweet FGITW points. It can cleaned up to actually answer the question later.
The helper needs enough information to solve the asker’s problem, and is willing to work with the asker to solve it.
The canonicizer wants enough information to ensure that anyone else who has a similar problem will be able to find and recognize it, and be able to use the answer to solve their problem.
The challenge seeker just wants the asker to go away because the problem can obviously be solved in 20 characters of Perl.
All four of these can agree that “What is the correct Megaspam brand™ NATURAL ENHANCEMENT pill dosage for you? (Click here to buy.)” is a terrible question, but the SO process has pain points for all of them for any question better than that. How can we reduce that pain and provide the best experience for all our users working constructively together?