How should I handle posting questions to which I know the answer?

Question

In regard to this:

What's the difference between 平和 and 和平?

I went ahead and posted this question as you see it, but Dono noted that the original post didn't mention any research effort or anything. If I want to add a question to the site that I would feel is useful, but that I am able to research and find an answer to myself, would it be appropriate to just leave out that information? Should I state explicitly in the question that I have carried out research and am going to answer my own question and just wait for a correction or better answer if someone else has it?

The following questions are relevant but do not address this particular issue:

Can we ask question for which we know the answer?

What to do? My useful question is already answered elsewhere

Answer 1

Although questions "[showing] research effort" are encouraged, if you're answering your own question, it should be clear from your answer that you've done the research yourself. Other users will see that you've answered your own question, even if you don't point it out explicitly.

Besides, you can't show all the research you've done in the question. If you did, you wouldn't have anything left to write in the answer! You'd have to end your question with "Is this correct?" and answer with simply "Yes"!

Of course, you can't go to the opposite extreme, either. If you put everything in the answer, it's not a real question and no one else can answer it! Your question should be complete and make sense, even without your answer.

Beyond that, show your research effort in your answer.

Answer 2

All four of Dono's hits are in Japanese... and well beyond the ability of many people who would ask this question. (The last 3 are also far less authoritative than wikipedia, you tend to need even more knowledge of the language to know what you can trust there)

Although we know you (ssb) are perfectly capable of reading them, that's totally irrelevant for judging if research has been done.

Aside from that, we don't have a 'general reference' close reason (and even if it did, we couldn't count Japanese-language dictionaries or we'd have basically no questions left). Being overly technical ("Does this show research effort or not?" "check") on a message that's a relic from stackoverflow is not particularly helpful to our community.

Answer 3

I've used the "Answer your own question" checkbox and answered at the same time before as well, e.g. What's the etymology of 負けず嫌い?.

I've found there that, in the process of researching while writing my question, I essentially answered it, so I figured I may as well move the "research" part which answers the question into an answer to document it for myself and anyone else who might have the same question in the future.

In some other cases, I didn't post some of my questions after answering them in the process as I didn't think they were likely to be useful to other people in the future, but I don't think that applies in this case.

I've changed my position multiple times on this kind of issue in the past, but I increasingly think all we should do is apply the effort/research rule on a case-by-case basis where it's beneficial to the site to do so. If extra research in a question could improve the content of the site or could clarify what's being asked, maybe extra information should be asked for, but in this case I don't think it would, and in any case the answer here I think shows more than a reasonable amount of research effort.

Answer 4

I already wrote this in response to the first meta question you linked to, but if you know the answer (or one of the possible answers) when you ask a question, please post the question and the answer at the same time by using the checkbox labeled “Answer your own question” on the “Ask a Question” page.