Do we focus more on building a database of answers, or helping individual learners?

Question

Half the time when I see people post a question, there is more focus on the inadequacies of the question than on actually answering it. It shouldn't have been asked because it's a duplicate. It's put on hold because it's off-topic (proof-reading request seems to be the main reason). It has the life edited out of it by another user, so the original asker can probably no longer understand the question. Or it didn't follow any number of the other strict rules by which a question may be asked here.

As I understand there is a kind of quest here to build a database of all possible questions people can ask, each with a suitable answer. But I wonder how encouraging it can be for learners of English to come and try a site where it ostensibly looks like they can ask a question and have it answered, only to have their question doctored, rejected, or elicit a page of discussion from English speakers about the inadequacies of the question.

I am keen to provide good answers to questions, and to follow the rules outlined to provide answers. But I am not so interested in joining the legions of rule-enforcers, and I might answer questions which the community rules would prefer I didn't answer.

Would it be better for me to not answer questions at all? Or continue answering questions including ones which weren't correctly asked?

Answer 1

Let's clear up some misconceptions.

SE never meant to be a place for answers to all questions. We don't spoonfeed people the answer to their homework questions. We don't answer "What is the hardest part of English in your opinion?" We don't even answer "What are adjectives?", unless decided by meta consensus. The SE model is ideally designed for pros helping pros. That doesn't mean it's not for beginners. I'll get to that.

This is what "pros" do and don't when asking:

1. They encounter a problem while doing some real work, like when a linguist encounters a tough-to-analyze sentence in some literary work.
2. They look for the answer themselves first.
3. They know what to look for and where to look for.
4. After they're fairly certain they can't find an answer, they ask other experts.

SE was for questions from people that do the above. The idea was that forums all around the internet were nice places with nice people and you could have a relaxing chat in the threads, but before SO there was no place to get a nice, clear-cut answer to a question you've been Googling the answer for, for a week. If there was ever an answer to a question like that, it was below piles of "I haz same problam" rubble.

The "keep noise out" mentality has been magnificently echoed in the philosophy of downvotes. The tool-tip reads

This question does not show any research effort; it's unclear or not useful

Unfortunately, most beginners don't know what to look for and where to look for, they ask other people as soon as a question hits them (which sometimes bothers people as they get flooded with questions), don't encounter real problems, rather exercises from a book, and most importantly, don't look for answers to their questions.

While this doesn't mean Stack Exchange sites are not for beginners, and everyone can participate, an SE site whose main participants are beginners has either of the two ways to take.

• Be divided into two groups; one group wants moderation and the other preservation of content, like the case of ELU, more or less, or
• Be too lenient on questions, let a lot of faults through, like the case of ELL

Notably, the mess English education is in some parts of the world, the contradictions of different terminologies and modern and traditional grammar only intensify the situation.

Yes; in my humble opinion, ELL is generally too lenient on what things can be improved in questions. One unfortunate side-effect of that is that you don't get to enjoy a clutter-free site and see how useful it can be among all those other online forums dedicated to English.

Moderation and preservation of content are on the same side. But as you see what went wrong with ELL, the seemingly endless quibbles about how a post should be phrased seem fruitless. Nevertheless, the mere existence of the tools used for moderation and the few users who do use them and not end up apathetic like me still manages to help this site grow.

And finally, the existing tools do need to be a bit discouraging. As I said, SE is meant to be a last resort. I can assure you it's much more helpful to type "have vs. had" in Google and open and read the first link than to spend time and energy typing a title at least 15 chars and a body at least 30 chars.

Answer 2

I think the answer to your question is yes. :-) There needs to be a balance, I think.

Ideally, learners who are asking questions will do their best to follow site guidelines, by:

• providing as much context as possible
• mentioning what research was done prior to asking the question
• explaining why they are confused

Questions that are scant on such details can be frustrating to answer, because it's often harder to fully understand the question, or why it's being asked. Learners who ask questions on ELL shoulder some responsibility: When such details are omitted, the quality of the site goes down, and the ire of the community goes up.

On the other hand, though, it's good for the community to remember how daunting this might be, particularly when a non-native speaker is struggling with rudimentary skills. We should be ever cautious about devolving into a police state where the same barrage of terse comments greets community newcomers. Too many comments and too few answers can give the impression that we are a community of nitpickers more preoccupied with enforcing standards than with helping learners.

I think the community functions best when people work together to keep the site healthy. I don't think we need to reach a consensus here in a meta question that everyone should behave the same way when a marginal question gets asked. Some will exhort the O.P. to improve their question; others might try to help the O.P. resolve their issue. Both courses of action can be productive. We can share the same complex tapestry of ideals yet still contribute in diversely positive ways.

In short, I've seen learners get very defensive, believing they were being singled out or picked on, when someone was only trying to nudge them toward improving their question so that it would get better answers and be a better fit for this site.

On the other hand, I've seen some folks ask "What did the dictionary say?" when the dictionary wasn't even a good place to find an answer for the question. (If someone is asking about a word with 27 meanings, it's probably not very helpful to ask, "What did your dictionary tell you?" Personally, I try not to leave that comment until I've looked up the word in two or three dictionaries, and convinced myself that an answer could be easily found with minimal investigation.)

Some questions probably deserve prompt closure while others deserve thoughtful answers. But there will always be a fuzzy area in between those two extremes that make it a little harder to figure out the "best" course of action. Rather than argue about what that best course of action is, I'd prefer everyone strive to contribute in positive, tolerant, constructive, and productive ways, mindful of being nice, and working collaboratively to maintain the quality of the site while fulfilling our mission of helping the English learner.