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What is the best way to respond when someone asks more than one question at once?

There has been some discussion in the past of circumstances under which this could be an appropriate thing to do. My current question is, what is the best way for me to respond in cases when, in my opinion, it was not an appropriate thing to do?

One obvious thing to do is leave a comment suggesting that the questions be re-asked separately. This sometimes works, but often the advice is not taken, and if I also want to answer one (or more) of the questions being asked then I have to wait to see whether the advice is taken or not. Also frequently other people go ahead and answer one or more of the questions, and then the asker is even less motivated to do the right thing by splitting them up.

One solution would be if people with post-editing privilege (or perhaps even higher rep than that) had access to a "split question" feature allowing them to split a question into two separate questions, preserving the original asker on both. If the question has already been answered, then ideally the question-splitter would also be able to choose for each answer whether to place it on one or the other of the resulting questions or whether to split it into two separate answers one on each question. However, it seems unlikely that anything like this would be implemented, since it would probably be a lot of coding.

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    $\begingroup$ I'd say, if the case is at least borderline-to-appropriate, then just make a comment suggesting to split the question, and otherwise go ahead and answer. If the case is really inappropriate, then -- in addition to the comment -- vote to close as "too broad", and possibly also vote down. $\endgroup$
    – Stefan Kohl Mod
    May 26, 2018 at 13:13
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    $\begingroup$ There is a feature request to have possibility to split question on Meta Stack Exchange: Could we have a way to split questions? Since it is at score $-4$, I don't think that this is likely to get implemented. And since I am already adding links to MSE, here are some related discussions on that site: What do we do with “multiple question” questions? and Multi-Question Questions: How Best to Handle Them? (And probably there are many other similar discussions.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    May 26, 2018 at 16:44
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    $\begingroup$ +1 from me. (Partially to get the post above the threshold for being displayed in the community bulletin - which might help the question to get a bit more attention.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    May 27, 2018 at 6:04
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    $\begingroup$ If the OP is not responding and you want to answer one part of the multiquestion, wouldn't the obvious solution be that you post a separate question about the specific part you can answer and answer it yourself. After that, you could add the link to your question. (At least if the original multiquestion is already closed as too broad, this seems like a reasonable course of actin to me.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    May 29, 2018 at 23:57

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Of course, a plain list of unrelated questions has no reason to be in a single post. But as you say there are cases in which it makes sense to state two or three questions together, because they are actually linked, or because they show some formal analogy that can actually help. In fact, sometimes in these situations we see a good synergy in the answers, as each one addresses to a single question and gives a spark to the remaining. But judging analogies is a delicate matter; some posters may like to ask about more facts at once, because some analogy suggests them a deeper connection. Is it right to split a priori such a multi-question just because we think there is no connection at all? I'm not sure. So I would first of all recommend the questioners to explain clearly the link between their questions, or at least why they think there is a connection. If it appears they have no reason, then it could even be seen as a case of a not well motivated or unclear question.

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