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If someone asks a simple question that is closed for being too basic, there doesn't seem to be any way to help the poster, which would seem to disillusion new posters about using the site. (I personally think the question is fine and specific enough, and voted to re-open, but that's not the point here. I don't think I can make the question more acceptable by editing it, or I'd do that.)

I was told that it would not be acceptable to put a link in the comments redirecting the asker to chat, and answer the question there. Why would it be harmful to the site to say, "This may not be a good question for the site, but I'm happy to help you in chat"?

If the question can't be improved, there's no point in using closure / lack of an answer to incentive the asker to improve the question, so what benefit does the site gain by prohibiting people from answering "bad" questions in less official ways (such as chat)?

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    \$\begingroup\$ It's kinda hard to answer this because it's predicated on an incorrect impression that the subject question is incorrigible. It CAN be improved, as it's not "too basic" but rather multifaceted and non-specific: the querent doesn't tell us what in the rules has them confused, and should separate out topics into multiple questions so they can each get due attention. (Assuming they read the rules, we need to know which bits confused them in order to explain it usefully; if they didn't read the rules, they should probably go do that.) \$\endgroup\$
    – BESW
    Commented Oct 7, 2015 at 10:26
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    \$\begingroup\$ Worth noting: as a new user, the querent doesn't have enough reputation to participate in chat. \$\endgroup\$
    – Dan Henderson
    Commented Oct 7, 2015 at 12:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ @BESW if you think this would be better as 5 different questions, perhaps you could comment on the OP and tell them so. \$\endgroup\$
    – PurpleVermont
    Commented Oct 7, 2015 at 14:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ [Related] What's with the policy on deleting answer comments on on-hold questions? \$\endgroup\$
    – SevenSidedDie Mod
    Commented Oct 29, 2015 at 2:16

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If a question is permanently closed, sure.

If you are just end running around the entire goal of having people improve their questions, get them opened, and get peer reviewed answers from the whole community, no, and your comment will be deleted.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ When you say "permanently closed" do you mean not "on hold" but "closed"? \$\endgroup\$
    – PurpleVermont
    Commented Oct 7, 2015 at 14:23
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    \$\begingroup\$ Use your judgement, man. Some questions are on hold because they're fixable, others are on hold because they're completely never going to reopen. In any case why don't you redirect your effort to helping people ask and answer the right way instead of probing around the edge cases of how to bypass the site metaphor. \$\endgroup\$
    – mxyzplk Mod
    Commented Oct 7, 2015 at 17:30
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    \$\begingroup\$ Because... I was (still am) trying to help someone, and getting shut down at every turn. Although there may be hope for the question, at the time I wrote this there seemed to be no way to make the question acceptable according to the moderator comments to that point. So, knowing that the question was never going to be ok, I tried to find a way to help the querent anyhow, and was basically told in comments that there was no acceptable way to do that. So my question stands, why make it impossible for someone who wants to help someone with a simple, but not site-worthy, question to do so? \$\endgroup\$
    – PurpleVermont
    Commented Oct 7, 2015 at 18:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ It's not "impossible," it's "impossible to do it at the exact time you want in the way you want" which is different. Oh look the question is fixed and opened now and ready for real help, which is how we do things here. \$\endgroup\$
    – mxyzplk Mod
    Commented Oct 7, 2015 at 19:29

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