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Interested in feedback regarding my review of a late answer to this 8-year-old question, How I can get Hangouts notifications on my phone even if I have it open in my PC

For google chat, if you change your status from automatic -> a custom status, you will get notifications on your android device even when chat is open in an active chrome session.

The late answer was about Google Chat, the app that replaced Hangouts. In review, I tagged the answer "This does not provide an answer to the question"

The OP responded with this comment

Well... I suppose if you want to nit-pick google hangouts is replaced by google chat, so perhaps it only answers the question "How I can get Hangouts notifications on my phone even if I have it open in my PC" to the extent that it is still pertinent. It solves the problem. To each his own.

I was going to leave the following comment but thought I would get some feedback from the community and mods prior to doing that regarding my choice to flag it as "Not an answer", and get feedback on my proposed comment.

I do keep in mind that answers don't need to be "right," but I was looking at it through the lens of a late answer that was not about the same product.

My proposed comment that I have not yet posted:

The 8-year-old post is about a product that no longer exists. It wasn't solved as the functionality was missing though some workarounds were suggested. A new product replaced it. The answer is 8 years too late for the OP and no one today has their problem. The rule of thumb on SE sites is to avoid answering old questions unless you have something substantial to add. This is for many reasons, not least of which is the time of site volunteers who review, improve, and comment on them. It also bumps a very old post to the top of the feed.

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Just to chime in, the only reason I posted the answer is b/c this is the stack overflow question I was served while spending the 10-20 minutes searching the internet to solve the active problem I had, which is how to properly get notifications on my phone, whilst also having google chat open. I was unable to find a result, so I messed around a bit and stumbled on this hack. If there was a plethora of easily findable questions specific to how to do this on google chat, which worked for me, I would not have taken the time to address an 8 year old question on a rebranded product. I posted explicitly b/c I imagine others would derive benefit by learning a quick dirty solution to a problem that is still active as one goes about one's business. Now... perhaps the proper Stack-exchange way to do that is to post a hypothetical question and then post the answer. And I imagine said question would get some views and duckets, so if that is your jam, Godspeed. ;)

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    It is not a rebranded product, as has been detailed. It is a different product. If you had an actual question (not hypothetical) that you solved with your answer, the community would benefit from that question attached to your answer.
    – Blindspots Mod
    Jun 20 at 3:31
  • Do the stack overflow communities encourage posting questions in order to post answers? I would think that would at best be outside the guidelines of expected behavior.
    – Seth Revelle
    Jun 20 at 3:48
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    Yes. If you have a question that does not exist and you solve it, then it is perfectly acceptable to post both the question and the answer and accept your own answer. This helps the next "you" who has the same problem find a solution. Please see Can I answer my own question?
    – Blindspots Mod
    Jun 20 at 3:53
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    To clarify, you can always answer your own question. If you have a reputation of 15+ you can do it in one step. Otherwise, you will need to post the question and answer sepperatly. After 48 hours, you can accept your own answer. I look forward to seeing your posts, and appreciate your efforts in this matter.
    – Blindspots Mod
    Jun 22 at 22:55
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In line with the community's feedback, I did not post my comment. I really appreciate the responses.

I continue to believe the answer in question may be useful as a comment on the original post

I appreciate the answers from @galacticninja and @Wicket who provided differing perspectives. @galacticninja invested a lot of effort in the answer and took pains to provide documentation for me to review.

Reading "Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?" was very informative, and I will refer back to it in the future. Ultimately, when taken in conjunction with all of @Shog9's comments, I didn't feel it was at odds with my position. Having said that, the article also makes sense in the context of @galacticninja's points if one believes that Chat is a continuation/rebranding of Hangouts.

How one sees the relationship between the two apps appears to heavily influence any position taken. I think (and hope) this is a rare situation, and I certainly would not apply the same logic to a product or suite that had a simple rebranding or name change, such as what happened with Google Apps -> G Suite -> Google Workspace.

Web Applications SE has a good system where multiple inputs are collected from the community. My own, from my review, is just one piece.

Aking this question on META has been valuable and I will reflect on the feedback and revisit some of the links moving forward.

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Google Hangouts is now Google Chat for all intents and purposes. I don’t think we should delete the answer over a minor detail. OP's answer provides an updated solution to an open, on-topic question.

We can allow this answer with a little more refining to give more context behind it. Here is how I would edit the answer to make it more relevant and provide more context:

As of November 2022, Google Hangouts has been upgraded to Google Chat. For Google Chat, if you change your status from automatic → a custom status, you will get notifications on your Android device even when chat is open in an active Chrome session.

You may change "upgraded" (if you think it's "marketing speak") to "switched", "transitioned", "replaced", or another similar word, and the answer would still be valid.

Please note that the "not an answer" flag is not meant for low-quality answers that actually answer the question. If you disagree with an answer or find it unhelpful, the appropriate course of action is to downvote it instead.

Just remember: if the text of the post contains an honest attempt at answering the question, then it is an answer - so don't flag it otherwise, and if you do, don't complain if your flag gets declined.

- Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?

and no one today has their problem.

Why would you assume that? It is possible that someone may have a similar problem with Google Chat, the successor of Google Hangouts. The OP’s answer might be helpful to someone and it would be unhelpful to delete the answer over a minor detail.

It also bumps a very old post to the top of the feed.

I don’t think this is a problem. In fact, the Community bot routinely bumps old posts over the top of the feed on all SE sites. This is done to encourage editing, voting, and answering of old questions. Therefore, I don’t see any harm in keeping an old, open, on-topic question active if it has useful information.

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    "Upgraded" is marketing speak. Google Hangouts was a cross-platform instant messaging service becoming a standalone product in 2013. In 2017, Google began developing two separate enterprise communication products: Google Meet and Google Chat as a part of its Google Workspace office suite. Google began transitioning Workspace users from Hangouts to Meet and Chat in June 2020. Subsequently, Gmail users transitioned from Hangouts to Meet and Chat during 2021and the Hangouts service was discontinued on November 1, 2022.
    – Blindspots Mod
    Jun 19 at 2:29
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    @BlindSpots I don’t think we should delete the answer over a minor detail. The term “upgraded” is irrelevant to the answer’s validity. Google Hangouts is now Google Chat for all intents and purposes. OP's answer provides an updated solution to an open, on-topic question. The answer will still apply even if you change “upgraded” to “switched”, “transitioned”, “replaced”, or another similar word.
    – galacticninja
    Jun 19 at 2:51
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    I appreciate your feedback. I don't agree that the two products are the same.
    – Blindspots Mod
    Jun 19 at 4:38
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Don't reply as comments are not intended for extended discussions. Be patient. It's very likely that the answer will be deleted.

Once the OP earns enough rep they might participate here and on the chat.

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