Question: Going off this question [here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26537486/radio-button-clears-text-boxes)...

Is it ok to give a jQuery answer if the OP has tagged jQuery, but does not use it in their code? It screams "mis-tag" to me, versus "gimme dat jQuery".

More or less, should jQuery answers be valid on a mis-tagged question?

(I use the term valid loosely here, as technically all answers that aren't spam or off topic are valid)

Answer: 
I tend to agree with this author's rationale [expressed in his comment in a discussion on this subject:](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30896297/onclick-function-in-javascript/30896696#30896696)

> 
> The only person here that should have issues with my answer is the poster then. Not you. I told him/her how to do it in vanilla and offered a much simpler way using jQuery. The poster can decide if he wants to use it or not.
> 
> 
> 

JavaScript questions never *require* jQuery; C++ questions never *require* Boost, and I suppose it may even be possible to answer Perl questions without referencing something on CPAN. That said, there are many, many questions where the use of a tool or library makes the solution considerably easier or less error-prone; if we could not have answers that demonstrated this, the site would be much poorer.
To me it depends on the question. If the question is

> 
> "How do I do X in JavaScript"
> 
> 
> 

where X is something that's not really doable in regular javascript, but has a reasonably simple solution in jQuery, then it seems like it's a fine thing to answer with a jQuery answer regardless of whether it's tagged that way or not. The asker may or may not use jQuery, it may or may not help the asker, but it's a reasonable answer. jQuery may have a bit of a bad rep here, but to me it's like answering an [r](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r "show questions tagged 'r'") question suggesting to use `dplyr`; it's a valid solution that could help the asker or later searchers. I'd upvote a non-jQuery solution over a jQuery solution to a question that didn't specify jQuery if it were reasonably simple to implement, but I have no problem upvoting the jQuery answer if it's much simpler.

If the question is not that, though, but is more about how JavaScript works, then a jQuery answer should only be valid if the question seems like it really does use jQuery. If it is entirely pure JavaScript and doesn't have any jQuery dependencies, then it should be answered as JavaScript and the [jquery](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jquery "show questions tagged 'jquery'") should be removed.