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 confess to being one of those people. I agree completely that you didn't need to delete your answer. The pinhole camera suggestion meaningfully added to the discussion. Reason is that you can't just take a protractor and measure the angle subtended by the sun.

Now the criticism was that we don't have a measurement of the distance to the sun. I hope that you don't take this to mean that *you didn't contribute* to answering the question, because you did.

At the root of the quibbling, however, was the fact that someone asked a fairly low level question that has an extremely difficult answer. Why do you think no one else has added an answer after that discussion? Probably several people looked into it and quickly realized the problem is more difficult than they thought.

Using references on Earth, how do you establish an astronomical length scale? That question is **insanely** hard. But is that what was asked? To be nit-picky, yes, it was. It was a simple question that stumbled on a really advanced and difficult question. To answer that advanced question, one would still start out where you started out.
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 :)