What prevents people from asking questions on Fluther?
Half of the questions I end up asking are generated in private conversations with other users.
Often I find something they ask me to be insightful or interesting. I will suggest that they ask the collective, as long as we are both on Fluther and people seem to appreciate an interesting question.
Most often, they request that I post it, or no action is taken.
What is preventing people from pushing out these things they are curious about?
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26 Answers
Well, I’m assuming they’re afraid of me~
No, to some extent…it’s about sticking around and leading a discussion once you ask a question or having to deal with tangents or other issues…people don’t want to bother…besides, an insightful question may be so within a private conversation but they don’t need to ask it of the collective…it’s not like they don’t have an answer…or at least they don’t care if others have an answer…
It’s easier to frame a question in a PM as opposed to posting it out for the world to see.
Guidelines don’t apply to PMs. Mods don’t police them. You already know who’s going to respond, and you don’t have to deal with… well, with anything unexpected.
@CWOTUS Do it, come on..say it’s me…say you don’t have to deal with me!...man, I’m bored tonight
Why do people not ask questions? Maybe because, as Google said somewhere, Fluther is a word mill, or something like that. In any case, it was not anything with iron, or teeth, but loaded with fluff. Someone posted a link to the traffic done on Fluther, and if I read it right, subjects like relationships, entertainment, etc, out paces stuff like politics, economics, and science. If it is true, the way it read anyhow, that the demographics of Fluther is mostly under 18, or those whom use it more, and in college.
Why ask anything significant, unless you want to think up a big bowl of fluff, when no one will hardly pay it any mind? Like why kill yourself making a fancy gourmet meal when all they want is a bowl of Skittles?
That is before one can account for the people who won’t answer the question, but spend all the time making the OP defend their position to even ask it; or flat out trying to discredit it as a question from the start.
A lot of time, as I have seen, they don’t worry too much about what they can’t ask, because they just get run off; by pitch fork and burning oil had it been reality.
I find the answers to most of my questions in Wikipedia.
Some of us like to fill our daily quota, the rest of us only ask questions that are important to us.
Not wanting to deal with the potential for unforeseeable drama.
Having a question, but also having only 2–4 people whose answers I’m really interested in.
Questions have more of a one-way communication, at least as far as asking the original question. PMs can be created to be much more two-way, where you can make sure everyone understands the question before moving on to the answers.
If there were no questions, there would be no Fluther. Thank the Fluther gods for the General, Social, Meta change – or this place would’ve dissolved into askville hell. Most General questions,albeit interesting, can be googled. It’s the Social and Meta questions that keep the community aspect of the site going. Even the fluffy, crappy self-indulging ones. Like most of mine.
Because there are gang tackles, where things become less civil, and then Great Answers become a way of proving how much right or wrong you may come off. Therefore, by doing things in private, thoughtful and provocative exchanges go back and forth, and without a point system installed, it becomes more meaningful.
I hear you, @whitetigress – but if we all just PM – do you think Fluther would still be around? It’s not someone’s charity, and unless we add content, i.e. questions and answers of all kinds, it would simply close down.
Some people have ‘question anxiety’, too. I know of several who virtually break out in a cold sweat while trying to ask a question. I’m not sure what that’s about, but there ya’ go. Me, I’m afraid of heights. :p
I would ask more, but so many simple pleasant Qs get turned into firestorms because one or two users want to use them as soapboxes. There are very few relatively “safe” topics. Fortunately, books and food seem to be universally good Q topics…
My sense is, contrary to what seems to be popular belief here, there is a flood of questions daily. Lots of folks have no inhibitions about posting a whole range of queries.
Unfortunately fluther, like most other sites I’ve posted on, questions usually do not take off well unless the user is either popular or furthers the agenda of the echo chamber rants. I ran into this problem on sodahead as well. I had asked many quality questions that I put time and effort into providing links, info from research and putting them together in a quality way to only get 0 or few responses of which didn’t even address what I posted and asked. Coming from somebody that works a very physical job for 12 to 14 hours a day it does become draining to make an effort for nothing on a regular basis.
You seem to have a pretty low opinion of us, @Paradox25 , why are you here? I have looked at your 2 Qs listed on your profile and one covered an issue of subjective semantics that might not have a large audience, and the other was simply misrepresenting a comparative state, not very well thought out at all. Not a good sampling of your “many quality questions”. Could you perhaps direct me to some more so that I can make a more appropriate assessment?
There goes another example of why people are so silent a lot of time.
I usually try to find my own answer to factual questions—it is so easy to google or find other ways to locate an answer. So when I do come up with questions for Fluther, it is typically to get the opinions of others. There are periods when the folks whose opinions I really wish to hear do not choose to opine and I am left with the thoughts of some I would rather not even bother to read.
It is tempting to think of a specific question and to ask it over the years when the group of Fluthering jellies shifts and changes to see if the response would vary over time with a different cluster of folks.
I really struggle to dream up questions to put on Fluther and some of them are, apparently, too obscure to get an answer at all (I am STILL trying to figure out the proper way to insulate the upstairs of a Cape Cod home).
@JilltheTooth I was referring to different sites I posted the questions on, not just fluther. I’ll admit that those 2 questions were lame, something I did in a pinch to be honest. I’m on here because I enjoy responding to the theoretical/philosophical questions that I can’t find anywhere else.
Sometimes, I just don’t want to fight the fight.
Sometimes a completely inocuous question, not requesting opinion at all, will get a response that completely pisses all over it… And sometimes that response will get more great answers than the people who answer the actual question.
When that happens, I lose heart… I’m such a huge fan of fluther, and I take care to answer only the questions that I can add something to, and then I take care with the answer itself. I just don’t understand why someone would waste their precious time answering a question they’ve decided isn’t worth answering.
That’s the kind of thing that makes me think twice about asking a question.
I don’t post many questions on this site because there is a limit and because it feels awkward to ask too many here. I use another site where I can ask several questions a day and I prefer that for asking most of my questions that I want public. When I do ask questions here, they are really important ones to me and not just anything that pops up off the top of my head (unlike many questions I have asked on that other site).
As for others, well, that’s something they’d know… :)
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