Answering the *individual*, or answering *the question*?

Question

This question will likely be quickly closed: How to make a POE switch?

In itself, the question is valid, although a bit broad. We could expound on what constitutes a Power-Over-Ethernet switch - from the magnetics to the processor, at an overview level, it could be explained fairly easily.

However, the asker is an admitted neophyte, so will not likely be able to utilize much or any of the information given. Therefore the question is closed.

But someone else will come along later and be able to use that information.

At what point do we answer the question, and not the asker?

Answer 1

The first thing would be to help new contributors (SE has a banner dedicated just for that purpose) understand how the site works (in a nice way).

If you think that it's a good question and it could be useful to someone else, then answer it. The only risk is your time and effort into answering the question.

We close questions that won't be useful to the site, in this case the title looks good, but the wording of the question looks more like asking for a resource IMO

"What would be the best ic or design to use?"

Which makes it look like they are asking to look for an IC or a design, and more of a shopping question. The problem with shopping questions is they tend to generate a lot of discussion and/or bad answers, you answer the question then the OP says, "oh that's not what I want" or "wait there is more I forgot to post".