Q:

What can I do to make sure my question is appropriate for stack overflow?

One of my questions was downvoted and determined to be inappropriate for stack overflow. This one in particular:
Store regex pattern as a string in PHP when regex pattern contains both single and double quotes
I read through the FAQs for stack overflow and couldn't find a set of rules that would deem this as inappropriate or off topic. Is there a way I could reword it to make it more appropriate or is this kind of question unacceptable as a whole?

A:

You haven't explained why you think the quotes are the issue, what "seems to break" means when you try your modification, or even what exactly happens with the original snippet. The reason for the close votes you've accrued reads "questions seeking debugging help [...] must include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it".
Somebody figured out the problem regardless, and pointed out that you neither looked at nor included the available error message. The downvote button's recommended meaning is "this question does not show any research effort; it is unclear...".
This is a pretty simple problem, so on the one hand it shouldn't be too much trouble for someone to help you with it. On the other hand, we have a fairly high bar for the amount of work you should put in yourself before asking your anonymous peers for assistance.
You've got your answer in this case, so that's good. Next time just spend more time investigating your problem yourself so that you can write about it with more clarity and -- especially -- detail.

