I've come across a number of questions in the past week or so, often in the review queues, that require an answer that's exposition of this or that rudimentary aspect of chemistry (example). In many of these cases, I get the sense that the questioner has a very slight understanding of chemistry; often, the question itself is clearly composed on top of other, more fundamental misconceptions or errors. While such questions are related to chemistry, they're the sort of thing that is almost certainly being covered in whatever chemistry class the questioner is taking, or in the resource(s) they're using to try to learn chemistry. I have mixed feelings about the best approach to these.
On one hand, the questions are such that the information clearly is available in just about any chemistry resource out there. In the case where a questioner is enrolled in a class, these questions are probably best asked of the teacher/instructor of that class, or of the classmates of the questioner, and the question should probably be closed as off-topic for insufficient demonstrated research.
On the other hand, if someone is attempting to learn chemistry by independent study, they may not have such local resources, nor have enough understanding of chemistry to make sense of what's written in their textbook, or what's available to find online. In that case, perhaps there's an argument to be made that there is value in assisting them here, as they might genuinely not have anywhere else (good) to go.
In either case, there's almost certainly value in having very basic questions and answers on the site. However, due to the lack of knowledge of the questioner, often such answers turn into a prolonged back-and-forth that's poorly suited for the Q&A style of the site.
So... what to do? Attempt an answer? Vote to close? Depends? Invite the questioner to chat, to allow for more free-form explanation & discussion?
If vote to close, what reason should be used? Especially in the "question rests on faulty premises" situations, nothing seems to fit. ("Vote to close because the question is nonsense" would be pretty insulting....)
Looking back at my question, I see from the 'Related' links that it is not a new one; back in 2012, two different questions were asked along these lines. The conclusion I draw from answers to these two questions is that, at that time, the above sorts of questions would have been closed as off-topic. I hereby propose re-visiting the matter, now that the site has graduated and the size/character of the community has grown/changed.