@freiheit - About the question How long should it take me to commute 13 miles a day? - maybe a question about estimating the length of a commute would be a better question. I can post it, but should it be a new question or an edit of the existing question?

@nhinkle - If you have any writing questions about this post, feel free to post on the Writers site. Blogging is on-topic there. </sneakyplug>

@NeilFein My gut feeling is that starting over with a fresh question that's a conscious attempt to create a canonical question/answer is the right way to go.

Okay, will do it now.

The question is already a bit borderline. Kind of a how long is a piece of string? type question.

Okay, have posted it. Any ideas for ways to improve the question are welcome. (Hell, just edit stuff right in if y'all want.)

@freiheit - Would you be cool with making this question CW? I don't want to seem like I'm rep-farming here.

(If you'd rather not do that, I'll just open a bounty for whatever rep I get from the question.)

@NeilFein The current CW guidelines confound me. I'd rather just let you rep-farm or rep-transfer-to-best-answer-via-bounty.

@freiheit - yeah. I'm not even sure what CW is for anymore. Does it have a purpose?

@NeilFein I think it still might be appropriate for our terminology index...

But since even anonymous users can suggest edits, it doesn't effectively lower the editing requirements anymore. It really just eliminates reputation earning, I guess...

True. But if a question like that were asked now, would it be allowed at all?

i think it still automatically happens to an answer that's edited enough...

We're no longer in the Wild West days of Stack Exchange.

But, yeah, good point about the automatic-CW thing.

@freiheit - Given the answer that @zenbike put on both questions, what's the purpose of having my question open now? It kind of negates the point. Maybe I should close mine and edit the original question to permit a more general answer.

@NeilFein hmmm...

Adding wordage along the lines of "how can I calculate this? What are the variables?"

etc.

(I have Chrome wirelessly streaming to my nice stereo speakers - I was practicing to a youtube video for a gig tonight. Your chat message made a thung noise and it was very loud in my dining room.)

@NeilFein Heh. BONGONG

Well, I turned it off. Try again now.

It worked!

I'm inclined to close the original question as a duplicate of your question

I'd feel funny about that.

It feels like I'm stealing rep as it is.

You mind if I try an edit?

As it is, the original has negative rep and 1 close vote...

@NeilFein go for it

Ooh, yeah. Well, one of the DVs is mine, as is the close vote.

Okay, doing it now.

@freiheit - There. How's that? If it looks good, we can close mine as a dupe of this.

@NeilFein sure

@freiheit - I thought users could close their own questions? It let me cast a close vote but that's it.

Bad Stack Exchange. No biscuit.

@NeilFein I'd have to double-check, but I think since it had an answer what you can do is limited

@freiheit - You mean mods don't know everything off the top of their heads?

@NeilFein I know that I can delete or close any post. I even have more exotic choices like "merge" and "protect"

(protect I use every month or so, typically when deleting the 2nd or 3rd spammy answer on a question. merge is weird and I don't know if I've ever used it...)

@NeilFein I think merging is what you do when you've got a duplicate, but both questions have good answers.

Yeah. When the answers to both questions would work with the same question.

On smaller sites, like Bicycles, we tend to find the dupes reasonably fast

Bicycles is a big-city site compared to Writers.

We're still under 5 questions a day, I think.

@NeilFein Bicycles is averaging under 5 questions a day