"Cheapest and Fastest"-question

Question

A huge number of upvoted questions (<- 6 links) that ask for the cheapest and fastest way of transport between two points. Personally I take issue with this as:

1. They are often looking for the 'best' (=subjective) option (a cheap and fast option, which might be neither the cheapest nor fastest), though this is not always the case.
2. It makes answers totally ignore the criteria in the post and instead just answer with the 'best' option always (even when the post clearly specifies it's looking for the cheapest option only and answers giving the cheapest options actually get downvoted for not being 'best')

What should be done with this?

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I am posting two answers myself proposing two possible ways to address which I think are both reasonable solutions. If anybody can think of a better way please do answer as well and I hope a consensus will be reached soon.

Answer 1

I propose that those questions by default get edited to "the cheapest option in reasonable time" (or specifically to whatever the author actually meant if he specifies it somewhere in the rest of the post). This is less subjective than "best option", even if "reasonable time" still is a judgement call. Although I think this lines up perfectly with the authors intent 90% of the time and is okay in another 9.9% of the time there is a theoretical chance it might not at all (he might be actually only interested in an answer if the cheapest option is also actually the fastest option).

Out of the two options I was able to think of I personally prefer this one as it requires less community involved and will get the author his likely intended answer quicker, but one way or another a clear way to tackle these questions should be decided on.

Answer 2

Another solution is to provide an overview of the trade-offs involved, with some example routes and links to useful tools. It's just as likely to address the OP's question and will be more valuable to other users who may have a similar problem in the future. If you see some option missing or perhaps want to provide other details, you can also post another answer to complement those that already exist.

The platform is based on the notion that a single canonical answer should be accepted but travel.SE has always been a bit more open-ended. No need to treat this as a mathematical problem or a competition in which only one answer needs to be the right one. IMO, if several partial answers have been posted, it's also fine to post a summary building up on them.

In fact, we can easily do that for all questions, even those that merely about “cheapest” or “fastest”, perhaps with a different emphasis depending on the specific criteria mentioned. For example if someone asks for cheapest and said the train is too expensive, mention cheaper train fares and hitchhiking and focus on the bus or car-sharing services, if someone asks about cheapest and fastest with no comparison point, propose a reasonable trade-off and mention other alternatives like busses, etc.

As far as the question itself is concerned, we can some ways to reformulate it or simply do nothing and let it be. As an example, consider Cheapest and fastest land ways to travel from Cologne to Prague? On one level the question is less than stellar, it does not specify many requirements and you can't really find a single ‘optimal’ solution or basis to claim that “my answer is better than yours”. But we now have answers covering all the main options and the whole thing is likely to be very useful to future readers. Nothing to be ashamed of or overly concerned about.

We can always request more details or suggest improvement but agonising over details of the formulation (“cheapest and fastest” is not materially different from “cheapest in a reasonable time“) or nitpicking over the choice of words when the intent is clear is not constructive. It's a bit like the perennial “walk or hitchhike“ comeback when someone asks about the cheapest way to go somewhere. We can try to nudge people into spelling out their requirements more explicitly but it's not unreasonable to make assumptions, that's how language works.

Answer 3

A second solution I have been able to think of is suggesting that those questions should be downvoted consistently and an explanation should be given to the post author asking what he actually meant. Additionally any answer that does not fit the criteria provided and does not include an option that is the fastest and the cheapest should be downvoted. Of course it depends on the criteria in the question what modes of transport are included (e.g. for a generic question it's impossible that the fastest option is also the cheapest one (private helicopter is quite likely the fastest option), but for one limited to public transport it's quite possible).

Once the post author edits his question with more generally usable criteria (no future reader is likely interested in unanswerable questions) the question can be upvoted again and appropriate answers can be written.