Olin and I have a long history of mutually disagreeing with best method over this. His soccer analogy has its place - but the differences are significant enough that it should be used with care.
The approaches are essentially either
- Working with beginners to help them improve their questions and, as bad questions very often reflect a woefully poor knowledge of electronics, helping them improve their basic understandings
or
- Shutting down questions and questionsers which fail to meet some threshold until they manage to meet our minimum standards.
Nobody should pretend that closing "bad" questions rather than tutoring the questioners will stop some people from asking questions, or more than one question.
Olin's approach ("writ large" here, albeit less so than it may seem, to make the point clea) is to beat them until they bleed. If they then crawl back, beg forgiveness, follow the master's steps faithfully and learn their lesson well then they may well become productive members of the group.
That's certainly one approach and it certainly does work.
Those who survive this often do become productive members and it certainly does weed out early on those who can't tolerate having their feeble failings shoved back in their faces. Those who equate simple rejection and an invitation to resubmit their question as gross rejection and personal criticism will be driven away and be unlikely to try again.
It can be argued (and very actively is by some) that
The loss of such people is of little or no consequence to the group - they are just cannon fodder to be winnowed out for the greater good.
Those who fail to pass this "test" are unlikely to make good engineers anyway and its better for them and the group if the are driven off early before times is wasted trying to educate them, when the outcome is nearly certainly going to be that they don't make the grade.
Allowing questions of this sort encourages sloppy behaviour. If we encourage it people will never learn and will take advantage of our largesse and will never make the effort to improve themselves. People should learn to ask questions well and if they can't do so their questions should be kicked out until such time as they learn to meet an acceptable minimum standard. Answering sloppy questions is pandering to laziness and abuse by the question asker and they will never learn better if they are not disciplined.
There are several "problems" with this perspective. Whether they are deemed important will in major part define the group long term.
I'll comment first on the "encourages laziness" claim, as this is an understandably big one to some people. It's a big one with me too. I do not want to encourage freeloaders, to do people's homework, to allow people to ask sloppy questions and to cut corners or to fail to rapidly improve. If you look at my comments you'll see that a frequent refrain is "please provide more information / please tell us what you are trying to achieve / please ask better questions." I am all for getting users to a better level of asking and informing as rapidly as possible. Some highly intelligent people, regardless of how much I have explained otherwise, deny that I am wanting any of these things. [Such persistent assertions sometimes make me wonder about the proponent's ability to learn :-) ] I no more like bad questions and lack of precision than anyone else - my aim is to provide the best possible means for respondents to better their own lot. It is not obvious how cutting them off at the knees (as it were) and isolating them from assistance with bettering themselves will achieve this more rapidly than allowing those who wish to to spend time on educating them.
Some questioners have "English as a second language" and find difficulty in communicating their desires well. Closely allied with this is the fact [tm] that some with high IQ's and great technical ability have little or no ability to perceive when this is the case, or may not care. Social adeptness and technical capability are less well correlated in engineers than in society in general :-). The result of this is that the technically most competent may be unable or unwilling to accommodate the needs of people for whom the English language is a barrier. The present practice discriminates against members whose first language is not English
The present practice takes no account of international time scales or thye real world realities of many people's lives. This is (obviously) an international forum and involves (obviously) real world people with other demands on their lives than just group involvement. A person may live in any world time zone, have limited hours in which they are able to access the forum and it may quite reasonably be days between accesses. Whereas, the admins and those with very high involvement tend to access the forum many times per day or, in some cases, close enough to continually (you know who you are :-) ).
This effect can be seen even on questions where the questioner is very actively involved and is interacting to refine the question and arrive at an optimum solution. Even in such cases there may be a day or two between responses.
The effect for the asker of a "bad question" is that they may ask a question and then return one or two or three days later, eager to see what answers they may have got, and instead find a series of negative comments, no answers, and that their question has been closed. The degree of discouragement that this can cause is seldom appreciated by those who are much involved and to whom it seldom of never happens. Which leads to ...
The present practice will be seen as much much much more as a disincentive that it will seem to those of thicker than normal skin. This isn't mainly about Olin but he serves as well as any to exemplify what this is about. Not everyone has as thick a skin as Olin. By far !!! :-). I have come to genuinely respect and appreciate Olin over many years - not only for his technical expertise but for his willingness to spend time and effort assisting others and for his willingness to support the PIC development community by providing high quality PIC development environment software to all comers at no charge. Along the way I've come to understand that his "does not suffer fools gladly, nor anyone that looks in the slightest way like they may be one" approach and his "kick them till they bleed" approach to education are based on his only genuinely thck skin, tolerance for abuse and ability and willingness to shake his head after an "encounter" and get on with the job without in most cases holding (as far as I can tell) grudges. (Some exceptions but not relevant here).
The "problem" is that his incredible tolerance for abuse and straight speaking blinds him to the fact that many or even most others are not made of the same material. The same applies to various extents to others in "positions of power" who are isolated from the effects of their own actions. When a first questioner, or beginner, or one who mostly lurks and listens, ventures into asking a question and is criticised roundly (in their perception at least) and then has their question closed or is similarly treated, the effect is very often out of all proportion to what those 'on the other side' would think was reasonable or sensible or even likely. Olin probably 'leads the charge in this respect', but few in positions of power probably (indeed apparently) realise how significant a bvlow something like closing a question can seem.
Most questions that are closed with an invitation to reopen are in fact never reopened - Consider - how many questions that are closed with the comment "this question can be reopened if you xxx" are in fact ever reopened? In my briefish time here I've seen a number of closures but do not recall have seen a reopening. The percentage of reopenings may not be zero, but it's probably not high.
If it is felt "that the number involved is few" it would be useful to check to see how true this is.
I assert, and this is the sort of thing that can be checked against records and by talking to people, that the disincentive to trying again is very high. I base this not just on n=my brief observations here, but on years of user interaction elsewhere. As an admin elsewhere I get to try and "pick up the pieces" after newcomers have been roughly handled after asking questions "poorly". Many are extremely traumatised by the experiece - even though the treatment that they have received may seem of no great import to others. If we decide we don't want or need such people here then by all means drive them away. A good 50% of humanity is in this class. If this is an elitist meeting place with no place for stumbing beginners then 'go for it'. Otherwise, the vagaries of human nature have to be taken into account.
If this group does not give a damn for such people or their perspectives then shutting them down before they start is certainly one way to deal with them. That's the effect of the present rapid rush to shut qustions down.
Suggestions:
Give respondents two chances at responding. ie at least a small amount of dialog. (Most closed questions evoke no response at all from the questioner in the brief time available).
Leave questions open for some predetermined period if no response received at all. Say 1 week but maybe less.
Have a standard reference which is ALWAYS referred to when questions need improving. This can be tailored to this list if desired.
Recognise that some are more interested in helping the more hapless.
Let those whose time or reputation is too important to waste on such people just leave them alone and
Let people who seek to encourage them do so. (Note that "encouragement" does not mean "featherbedding". Encouragement can be extremely robust but kindly.)
