I remember as a young man asking my uncle what he classified as and in his words “a rather Stupid question”. he quickly retorted with an example of what meets this qualification. He said, “Now William a smart question is What are you eating? and a Stupid question is Why are you eating?”. While asking why you are eating is a valid question, in some limited contexts such as when one is eating in a food free library or computer lab or other place where eating is prohibited most of the time it is a senseless question, as humans eat to fulfill a physiological need. .the second question makes sense 85% of the time this is not the case. Nevertheless, I nodded tacitly and continued my breakfast, as his point was understood. In essence It is very easy, and almost natural not to spend the extra brainpower to come up with good questions. It is for this reason that up until recently internet support forums were full of stupid questions. More commonly now however these less than helpful questions are quickly discarded by both human and automatic forum moderators. Before they even take hold. This being said it is critical to be able to qualify and codify the criteria that determine if a question is stupid or smart. One article that gives a high-level overview and some concrete examples of general question quality control best practices is “How to ask questions the smart way” an analysis based on this process is pretty thorough to weed out things that are less than helpful.
Good questions require you to have done your own research. Along this line of thinking it should be abundantly clear that No one likes a question that has already been answered several dozen times. One of the best ways to ensure that you do not run afoul of the mods is to ensure that you have already searched the very forum you are planning to post two to see if someone has already posted the same or a very similar question. It is very likely that someone else has already asked. one example of a bad questions is this question here on stack exchange article. The linked Message follows the fundamental bad question format. I am new… why doesn’t [insert code blob here] work. In essence the question is not specific. The asker basically throws up their hands and says I have written something, and I don’t know what it is or why it doesn’t work. This is where it is paramount to do your own research. Although this question clearly violates Raymonds rules in the before you ask, and many in the when you ask section. the community was gracious enough to answer, however.
One way to measure the value of a question is to see how many times it was upvoted. A stupid question may not be stupid the first time it is asked. Here is an example of this. Questions that may otherwise be considered stupid but have a large question base usually fall under the category of frequently asked questions. Here the community gathered around to help answer a simple definition that had been confusing developers for a while. Therefore, the question is simple, but it is specific enough to generate discourse, and therefore it is not necessarily stupid. Somewhat-Smart questions often spark meaningful discussions and offer unique insights, making them valuable. These questions can uncover hidden complexities within seemingly straightforward topics. As seen in the provided Stack Overflow example, even seemingly basic inquiries can foster a supportive community eager to share their knowledge and experiences.
In conclusion, now more than ever subpar questions are regularly purged from our online communities. Thus, it is critical to ask your questions as though your online reputation depended on it. A great place to start when it comes to question quality is the fundamental principal of Doing your own research first. These forums are not designed to complete your work for you, rather they are designed as communities of helpful individuals that would like to give you a gentle nudge in the right direction. it is clear that most of these forums are free, if you were paying someone to answer you feel free to ask inordinate and silly questions, free forums are not however the proper place. You would not ask a carpenter to build you a free house, and you should not throw up your hands and ask strangers online to debug your entire codebase. An additional reference/ resource for questions is the aforementioned article. It provides great guidelines as to what is appropriate and what is inappropriate on the stage known as the world wide web. Everything you do affects your reputation including what and how you ask questions.