What to do when a question, in content, leads to different answers based on title

Question

Well, I recently came across this question on the review stack:

Can I get a new IP address? Is it legal?

And although the answers are effectively answering the question as indicated in the title, the original poster's intention was, in my opinion, to fix a problem he had with Twitter. Two questions arise with this question:

1. Will we actually help the user with his Twitter problem?
2. The people that come across the question may get the answer they are looking for, but there will still be a scent of Twitter in there.

Ultimately, my doubts are on the topic of the question. We are answering his question, but not his Twitter reference. If eventually this gets no answers regarding Twitter specifically what should be done to the question? Should it be reformatted to only fit the getting a new IP question?

Answer 1

Usually I ask the person (in a comment) "Did you mean to ask $this to solve $that".

Depending on his or her rep. I will then point out how to edit the post or edit the post. Often I also leave a comment with "I changed $this to make it clearer. I you disagree you can revert it or use the [edit] link to clarify it further".

If the OP reacts then the post and title will hopefully be in sync.

Answer 2

If the solutions had nothing to do with an IP address, I believe it would be ok to turn the title itself into representing that it was a twitter related problem.

I am against redrawing the Question itself to suit answers it may receive, that type of thing could lead to more answers that are "stock" answers for specific issues.
Remaking a question to fit the answers also tosses out the possibility that the Original question has a much better answer, than the ones that are there. If the question is redone into some stock question for a stock answer, it totally misses the chance to have an answer that is very specific to the specific whole problem of the question.

If it turns out that Changing the IP was the solution to the whole problem, not just what it says in the title. I would be ok with it becomming the ONE true "change your IP" question.

Titles are not questions, although they should represent the question. The users title could have represented the question better.

Other stuff: Odd ways of talking, strange titles, different ways of saying the same thing, and different ways to answer improve the chances of some person finding information on superuser.
Not everyone searches with the correct technical terms, or even knows what to search for.

Answer 3

In this particular case, it seems very clear to me. The user is asking how they can change their IP and that is what we should answer. That is what the user is asking and that is what others who stumble upon the question are probably wondering since they will have likely clicked on the question's title.

Whether the user want to change their IP for a specific reason or not does not affect the fact that the question itself is "How can I change my IP". We should explain that this is not likely to solve the OP's twitter problem but we should stick to answering the question asked.