Question: [This question about the sun's circumference](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/68120/how-is-suns-equatorial-circumference-measured/68125#68125), I answered with what I *thought* was a helpful answer - it seems that a couple of others found it useful (2 upvotes), but I am getting grief about the answer being "while strictly correct, but is enormously unsatisfying".

Why not then, if an answer is "enormously unsatisfying", post n alternative answer?

What have I done wrong this time?

Answer: 
I can only repeat what I wrote before.

1. Your answer is strictly correct.
2. But you have assumed the hard part of the historical problem has already been solved and answered with a basic geometric identity so I found your answer to be uninteresting.

and emphasize that 

* I did not vote your answer down.
* No one else had voted your answer down.
* A couple of people had found it useful enough to vote up.

Finally, I'm having a hard time understanding how you get from a +2/-0 result on an answer to understanding that you have "done [] something wrong" or "stuffed up". You are ahead with that answer and there is no reason to expect that you will ever be behind---the answer is correct as far as it goes.
I guess the unsatisfying bit is the inclusion of "Distance from Earth to the Sun" in the formula.

I agree that the question is a bit unclear in this aspect; I think it's trying to ask "how was the Sun's diameter *first* measured". From this point of view, talking about the E-S distance just raises another question "how was the E-S distance calculated?"

To make a rough analogy1, this is similar to being asked "How can I calculate the circumference of the Earth", and answering "Multiply the diameter by $\pi$". Again, this is strictly correct, but not really satisfying.

1. I've tried to make the issue clearer in this analogy by exaggerating the situation. I've found that folks sometimes easily get offended by such exaggerated analogies, so I'm just mentioning that I don't mean to offend here :)