Is it fine to disclose a silly red herring in my own question?

Question

On my first visual question (which isn't lateral-thinking), I have placed the important letters on certain locations, and then proceeded to fill in the blanks with nothing relevant to those letters.
Instead of filling complete random numbers, I placed here and there some words to form a red herring that could be used as a more silly but still believable answer to the puzzle.

I have thought of disclosing the red herring as an answer after placing the checkmark on the valid answer, but is it okay to do that ?

More generally : is it okay to disclose some red herrings as answers on our own questions ?

Answer 1

Personally, I like to have "meta" information about closed puzzles, both for questions and answers to them. For me, this site is to a large extend about learning how to build and solve puzzles, and for this learning process it can be very useful to know what other peoples (both solvers and creaters) were thinking.

I therefore find it absolutely good if you would 'finsih off' some already "accepted" question with further information. It also gives others the chance to tell you what they thing about your puzzle and the red-herring, helping you in becoming a better puzzle-smith.

What is the best way to do so? Edit question? Add comments? Add own/wiki answer? I have used all of those, and I think it depends on the circumstances. In general, you should best aim for editing your questions/comments/answers into a format, which makes the whole thread "valuable" for future readers.

The only thing worthwhile keeping in mind: Potentially new users might visit your question in the future with the intent of "solving it", so try avoiding to spoil your own puzzle with placing 'solution' information into the actual question-post. If absolutely needed, use spoiler-tags.