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According to answers to another meta question, it is okay to post questions for which we know to answer, so it follows that we may also answer our own questions. But what if we only have a theorized answer that we do not know correct or wrong? Is it okay to post it as an answer?

I usually include my guts feeling and initial suspicion in the questions themselves, but for one of my recent questions I could only think up a theory after a few people already answered the question (but none of the answers contain that theory) so I thought maybe modifying the question to include it is a tad late. Plus if I post it as a separate answer I could get feedback to the theory rather than to the question. So I'm almost sure that I should post it as an answer. But just to be safe, I thought I'd better ask around first, hence this question.

So, is it okay to post theorized answer to our own question?

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When you post a question, you have to think carefully what your question really is.

If you question is “I encountered this expression, I have some theory/guess why it is in this form, is my thought correct?” then that is the question. The theory which you are unsure about is part of the question.

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  • But what if I only thought up the theory after I posted the question? At the time I posted the question I did not have a theory.
    – Lukman
    Sep 7, 2011 at 22:37
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    @Lukman: In that case, I think that editing the question and posting an answer are both reasonable options. If no one has posted an answer, editing the question seems like a much better option, but after someone posted an answer, it can sometimes make an awkward situation if you edit an answer.
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Sep 7, 2011 at 22:44
  • In other words, what you want to do is to add or change the question (whatever the reason is) after some answers have been posted. That is naturally difficult to handle. I do not think that there is one solution which can be applied in all such cases.
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Sep 7, 2011 at 23:08
  • I've posted my answer (japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/3037/…) and I believe the length and content of the post warrant it to be there ;)
    – Lukman
    Sep 8, 2011 at 3:00

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