What to do with questions that turn out to be based on a "fake"?

Question

Example: this one. We know now this is a fake.

Is there a consensus on what to do with it?

Suggest the OP to ask for the reasons that this cannot be real.

Seems a good choice to me, as the explanation can be reused for other fakes, and is overall interesting and educational.

This may lead to more questions of this kind in the future, which may or may not be what we want.
Suggest the owner of the comment saying it's a fake to write an answer.

A bit like the previous option, but the answer doesn't answer the actual question, the title will be misleading vs. the content.
Do nothing.

The comment will be visible. However this question may be closed/deleted sooner or later.
Vote to close and/or delete it.

The premises of the question are wrong, hence there is no correct answer.

I'm not sure why we needed to edit the question in the first place. The answer to "what is this airplane" is "it's a photograph which has been tampered with and isn't actually a real airplane at all." — Lnafziger, Jul 31, 2017 at 19:48

user14897user14897 · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-30 15:49:59Z

7

It depends.

My suggestion is to reword only the title, and leave the body and answers as is. For example:

It fits skeptics.se as well as av.se

Since the demand for such questions is low, I say we handle it on a one-by-one basis.

answered Jul 30, 2017 at 15:49

user14897

3

$\begingroup$ I agree, I think these things are so rare that a general policy wouldn't be useful. I do think we should provide an answer if possible and appropriate, though: in the end someone has a question and explaining the fake is presumably a valid answer that improves that person's understanding. $\endgroup$
– Pondlife
Aug 1, 2017 at 18:00

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