Below I am mainly talking about the recent question “Counting number of increasing subsequences of length k” by orryowr, but I want answers which are not specific to this question.
Suppose that a user wants to ask a question, and he/she finds out that the question has been already asked and answered. However, the answers posted there are not satisfactory because they are unclear or they are not answers to the exact question being asked.
Is there a good way to to ask for a clearer or better answer to an old question?
The following are some ways, but they have their own disadvantages.
One thing he/she can do is to post a question nevertheless, probably stating why the existing answers are not satisfactory. However, from answerer’s viewpoint, I think that it is better to post a new answer to the old question or edit an answer to the old question rather than posting an answer to the new question, because it is the same question and it is just a better answer. Therefore, I think that in this situation, the new question should be closed as a duplicate for the old question. Now from asker’s viewpoint, it is awkward (or possibly even abusive) to post a question knowing that it will be closed as a duplicate of the old question.
Another thing is to write a comment to the old question or its answer. But if the user is new, he/she cannot post a comment. In addition, if the user who made that post is no longer active, chances that anyone notices the comment are slim.
Another thing is to edit something in the old question or propose an edit. If the user has enough rep points, he/she can edit a post. Add a tag or correct a typo or make some other harmless edit, and the question is bumped on the top page and it receives some attention. Proposing an edit has one obstacle, but if the proposed edit is accepted, it has the same effect. But either way, this sounds like an abusive or spam-like activity to me.
Another thing is to bring this up in chat room. Problems are that it is usually not active, and that if the user is new, he/she cannot post a message in chat.
Another thing is bounty, but this requires some rep points.