When people don't answer the question you thought you wrote, what do you do?

Often times, I find that people do not answer the question I meant to write. Sometimes it’s because my question wasn’t clear enough, but other times it seems like people either didn’t read it or they didn’t understand it. This doesn’t matter, though.

What happens is that the answers start to go awry. You don’t get the answers for the problem you wanted answer for, and you do get answers for other, irrelevant problems.

For example, I often ask questions where I want personal experience, not advice. As in this title, I may italicize the ”you.” I think I always get somebody thinking I’m asking for advice instead of experience. They don’t talk about themselves. They just talk about general stuff, which is pretty unhelpful. I sometimes think of flagging it as not an answer to the question, but I never have.

Sometimes I will intervene early to try to get my question back on track. Other times I will wait to see if anyone catches on and actually answers the question I meant to ask. Sometimes I figure it’s the nature of the beast, and there’s really nothing I can do, so just sit back and enjoy it, anyway.

If the answers veer off course on one of your questions, what do you do?