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I went to post a question on installing Windows 8 on my ARM-based tablet, only to find myself confronted by this presumptuous checkbox:

the self-answer checkbox on Super User's 'ask' page

If I knew the answer, I wouldn't be asking! What reason is there for this insult?

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I'm glad you asked! This option isn't for you. It's for people who know things. And want to share that knowledge with others.

Maybe they've seen a lot of people asking similar questions on a thorny topic, or struggling to diagnose a complicated problem, or just spent hours fighting with a misbehaving hardware - and now they want to save you the trouble of even having to ask by providing both the question and its answer together.

This is nothing new - it's been explicitly encouraged in the FAQ since Super User launched. But a lot of folks never realized that it was acceptable, so now we're building it right into the system. For now, it's limited to users with at least 100 rep, but this may be changed at a later point.

See also: What is this “answer your own question” jazz? on MSO

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    And Please DO answer your questions, when you discover what the heck was the problem, or even if you choose the lazy way out and re-installed, or even if an "Answer" gives you clues to follow, follow up on it in the comments. It is just as bad having 10 good answers with an unresolved question, as it is to have 10 bad answers with an accept for "is that the best you can do" :-) I wanna know WHAT fixed it, I dont care how that comes about or who gets stupid points for it.
    – Psycogeek
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 19:29
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    I see what you did there... ;)
    – iglvzx
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 21:44
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    Oh, so I wasn't only just noticing something always there, it's actually new? And here I was questioning my eyesight.
    – Bob
    Commented May 19, 2012 at 16:55

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