People post too many questions

This mainly relates to tech communities, but certainly applies elsewhere. I’m just so sick of seeing a constant flood of basic questions being posted that would’ve been better off as a search query.

Instead of communities being a wealth of discussion and a place to learn/exchange knowledge and ideas, it feels like most have about 10-20% solid content at best, and 80-90% useless noise: “How do I X?”, “What Linux Distro should I use?”, “What does Y mean?”

Like, I’m all for asking questions, but I prefer to help those who help themselves. Is this all the result of iPad kid syndrome or something?

If you’re willing to take the time to post a simple question that 50 other people have already asked within the last week instead of taking 5 seconds to search for an answer (that’ll probably be the first result on any search engine), your thought process makes no sense to me and I can’t see you as anything other than a complete nuisance to the community/fediverse.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

AgentGrimstone,

There’s those people and then there’s people who enjoy being able to answer someone’s question.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Damn, immediate upvote on this! A truly unpopular opinion!

willya,
@willya@lemmyf.uk avatar

I’ve wondered this forever.

ptz,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

I didn’t think that still existed xD

L0rdMathias,

What defines too many questions? How many questions should we allocate each user? Even if everyone has access to a single question, I’m sorry to tell you that’s still hundreds of thousands of questions you would see.

People asking for answers instead of doing their own personal research is older than civilization iself. Asking someone that already knows the answer before doing your own research is a fundamental and basic effort to reward evaluation that humans learn at an extremely young age.

insomniac_lemon, (edited )
insomniac_lemon avatar

On the other side of the coin, if you ask a question about something niche (perhaps there is no answer other than no) you will likely get no responses at all or a common search result that is the wrong answer that you've already looked into.

speck,

I'd prefer a flood of similar questions than the flood of circle jerk sycophant memes. At least the repetition of the former helps solidify my knowledge of common distros or whatever

dual_sport_dork,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

You know, this exact same complaint has been repeated, near verbatim, for as long as the internet has existed.

Post a question on a dial up BBS? “Just search!”

Post a question on Usenet? “Just search!”

Post a question on a forum? “Just search!”

Post a question on Discord? “Just search!”

Post a question on Lemmy? “Just search!”

Etc. I don’t think it’ll ever change.

L0rdMathias,

True. There seems to be a large portion of the Lemmy user base that are either new to discussions, or have an extremely limited and narrow experience interacting online and expect everything to be like what they’ve seen before.

adam_y,
@adam_y@lemmy.world avatar

We had a similar conversation back in the forum days.

A lot of people screaming RTFM.

But someone enlightened me a little.

Often when people ask questions like that, what they are really doing is trying to become part of your community. An easy to answer question, a way for people to assume the mantle of the expert.

Really, how hard is it to answer those questions… And maybe stipulate that the person asking the question can answer it for the next one?

Obviously, some people are just treating you like Google, but if you act hostile, you’ll never know.

andrewta,

My thoughts exactly

Rentlar,

Upvoted for unpopularity. I don’t want to raise the bar on questions just yet. First, can you point to me where newb questions are flooding a tech community, here on the Fediverse? !linux might be a little but it’s not egregious.

Second, “high quality researched questions only” gives people at every level of experience impostor syndrome. You get someone doing a deep dive in their dconf, syslogs and server configurations being like “not sure if this belongs here”. Being more restrictive until we can better define what makes a good question, like having an FAQ or wiki, will have a negative impact on how well knowledge gets shared here.

Third, well researched questions get less traction most of the time. Yes easy questions are a bit of a soapbox stumping platform but in my eyes it gives those communities more visibility for other people to ask better questions and share better information.

Fourth, easy/beginner questions and anecdotes (I’m thinking of the posts like, “I just installed Linux, hooray! What do I do now?”) encourage other people that don’t post or comment have their questions answered that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred to them and helps everyone go from beginner to more knowledgeable.

NoneYa,

Search engines of today are neutered from where they used to be and it can be hard to find reliable information. Google sells top spots and Bing heavily encourages Copilot answers at the top. Both engines try to answer questions you have but I’ve often found the answers to be flat out wrong or partially correct with a caveat.

Asking the communities directly usually gets better answers and leads to follow-up questions as well as discussion.

livus,
livus avatar

This. I ask a question in a forum because I respect the people in it and want their take.

If I wanted to wade through pages of irrelevant shitty SEO bait pages I'd google it.

arcayne,

I agree. I love seeing community engagement when there’s an actual question involved.

My issue is with the flood of incredibly, incredibly basic questions being repeated over and over again. Especially when the user isn’t even looking for discussion - just an answer. Essentially treating the community like their own human-powered search engine. Gives off the vibe that they OP’s don’t care enough to put any effort in, they just want someone else to spoon-feed them and/or tell them what to do. Seems so mindless.

And, the sheer volume of posts that fit that description can, and do, inadvertently drown out the less frequent, but more valid questions and requests for help… which just, sucks.

NoneYa,

Ah sorry, I agree wholeheartedly then.

I guess I see this take too often and it seems to extend to almost any questions anyone ever has on the forum/board and it gets so obnoxious seeing the negativity towards true noobs trying to learn and educate themselves or just have a discussion. A bit biased because I’ve been there but try to do due diligence.

But no, you’re correct and it does often come off as lazy and utilizing the board’s search usually can resolve these basic questions too since they’re usually not the first to ask these basic questions too.

sentient_loom,
@sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works avatar

Genuine unpopular opinion. ^^^

I also think it’s OK to ask questions.

shininghero,

Counterpoint: Having those questions posited here does mean we can start getting fediverse traction in Google. Even if it's a tiny amount.

arcayne,

I see where you’re coming from. “Any publicity is good publicity”, as they say. So, sure… traction is good for overall visibility. I agree. We do need more of that.

To counter your counter, for the sake of discussion:

If the traction is built on semi-incoherent noise, doesn’t that feel precarious? Artificial, even? Kinda reminds me of bot-boosting, where you’d see a big initial uptick in views and maybe drum up some actual buzz. But in the long term, it’s either a fart in the wind, or it backfires altogether and ends up fueling a negative public opinion.

DiscordMod1990v2,

Indeed

ptz,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

I feel like that’s a popular opinion, but I’m going to upvote it anyway because I agree very strongly with it. OTOH, it could be considered unpopular because of the sheer number of people posting questions that should be Google searches.

arcayne,

Yeah, figured it was a bit of a coin toss. Eye of the beholder, and all that. I did rewrite the post a few times to dial back my spiciness… maybe it would have been a better fit if I left it sounding extra bitchy 🤣

ptz,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

Eh, I like the subdued tone. Feel like it makes your point more clearly without coming off as confrontational.

Blyfh,

Completely agree.

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