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How does this site feel about questions posted only in order to share the related answer, added by OP as they post their question, as in How should I respond to an offer to pay a bribe for authorship fraud?. It feels to me as if someone is editing a FAQ page, maybe in order to ease future reference to standard answers, but does it as a pseudo question.

I’m decidedly no fan. What is the community opinion? Are there related rules?

As I try to submit this, I see a checkbox “answer your own question Q&A style.” Is this now encouraged? It makes little sense for a site as this one.

Edit after cag51’s comment:

I mean specifically on this site. The linked self-answered questions in the meta answer address common coding situations. I’m also familiar with the second reason given, and have done it myself (later find an answer to a question I asked on math.SE, and posted it). With the typically softer type of questions here, it seems to me a possible platform for soap-boxing - not in the case at hand, although I don’t see why it needed to be asked. “Should I still pursue an academic career? Yes, and here is why.” It’s like a blog - or could turn into one. And my remark is only about post+insta-answer situations.

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    Are you asking about the practice of asking-and-answering generally, or do you have a particular concern about the linked question? In the former case, asking-and-answering is explicitly encouraged network wide, see this discussion.
    – cag51 Mod
    Oct 20, 2020 at 14:58
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    @cag51: I mean specifically on this site. The linked self-answered questions in the meta answer address common coding situations. I’m also familiar with the second reason given, and have done it myself (later find an answer to a question I asked on math.SE, and posted it). With the typically softer type of questions here, it seems to me a possible platform for soap-boxing - not in the case at hand, although I don’t see why it needed to be asked. “Should I still pursue an academic career? Yes, and here is why.” It’s like a blog - or could be. And my remark is only about post+insta-answer.
    – gnometorule
    Oct 20, 2020 at 16:47
  • Thanks for clarification. Do you have any "real world" examples akin to your hypothetical example? I see what you mean and agree that you may have identified a way to abuse our format, but if the worst example is the one you linked above, I'm not sure there is a problem that needs to be solved.
    – cag51 Mod
    Oct 20, 2020 at 19:35

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So far as I can see, answering one's own question is, and has always been, a fine and encouraged contribution.

Some arguments in favor of this:

  • StackExchange is not just for the questioner but also those who search for similar questions afterward.
  • Other people can add their own answers as well, that may be even better than the self-answer.

But what if somebody tries to abuse this to game the system in some way? Well, if the Q&A pairs they post are of low quality, then they should get downvoted, flagged, and/or closed just as they would for low quality questions and answers that do not come in a pair. If it happens often, then the person will end up running into automatic system limitations.

If the Q&A pairs are of high quality, however, what is there to even be upset about?

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    Agreed, this would be my answer too: there's no need to handle this kind of Q&A any different from "standard" Q&As.
    – Massimo Ortolano
    Oct 20, 2020 at 19:12

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