Why do people on fluther do this?

Not really. Sometimes it is important to remind the asker that they or a qualified individual are the best person to make the decision or to analyze something despite the askers obvious intent to intake comments from Fluther.

Many times people come here with medical and legal issues that, as non-doctors and non-lawyers, most of us can’t answer. And the ones who are qualified still can’t see the patient/client so they can’t make a full decision.

For more personal issues, you can ask us about it all you want, but in the end either the decision is yours OR it is something you’ll have to talk about with your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse/best friend/parent/child. Asking us, while good for ideas, isn’t going to cut it. And we don’t want you to think it will.

So, no. It’s not annoying at all.

People are looking for advice. Sometimes the best advice we can give is “Don’t take our advice. Go to the source.”

I agree with you, @EP & @Aug.

At the same time, I do find posts irritating that essentially respond to a question by saying “I’m not going to answer this for some reason” (I don’t know, I don’t care, you shouldn’t have asked, your question is dumb, I know but I’m not going to tell you). It’s not necessary to record every reaction to a question; a posting is essentially asking others to pay attention to our thoughts, and those are just empty. If we don’t have anything to say, we can just close the page and leave it to those who do.

What they said.

Stick around. Eventually you’ll see dozens of relationship questions where the querent asks Fluther what his or her beloved is thinking, or what his or her beloved wants, when the only person who can answer that question is the beloved.

@Jeruba: Ah, but sometimes we have something to say—“I know the answer, but you asked the question in a very asinine way, so I’m going to let you wonder” is almost certainly not the answer the querent wanted to hear, but sometimes it’s what the querent deserves to hear.

Fluther has a large audience – so ask a question and someone’s bound to know the answer or at least the right direction to start in. Who’s to say what a valid question is or isn’t, if you can’t ask – then what’s the point? AND if you leave something discouraging you’ll find less and less people asking. So is it annoying, yes, if it’s discouraging – no, if it’s an honest “ I don’t know but this link might help…” and points to another avenue for help. Otherwise I say, if you don’t know don’t answer. If you’re going to tear a person up for their question then they are going to leave with a bad experience, which isn’t fair.

In general, Flutherers do not want to discourage people from asking questions. I disagree, however, with your statement, “Who’s to say what a valid question is or isn’t.” The resource for that is the Fluther Guidelines.

Some questioners fail to take them into account. The questions that draw the types of responses that you may find discouraging are ones that don’t observe some of these points:

“Please respect the time and energy of the people in the community. ”

“Totally open-ended or poorly thought out”

“Egocentric attention-grabbing”

As for the responses mentioned in the original question, I have sometimes made those, but only in context of as much help as I can provide. I don’t think anyone who does it intends to be annoying, just realistic. Also, they are usually not provided without some insight from the poster as well.

I understand, and I’m not talking about doctor or lawyer questions here, but the person is obviously posting here for a reason I think it’s counter productive to say go talk to the “insert person you have difficulty talking to here”

If you and your girlfriend are fighting about ____ and you want to know why she thinks something, you have to ask her. And I’ll say that on an answer.

We can theorize for hours about why someone thinks something or how someone might feel about you, but you have to ask that person.

So I’m guilty of what you’re talking about. And I’m proud of it. People need to talk to their significant others. It’s not always appropriate to go to fluther for help with your relationship.

Why do you “think it’s counter productive to say go talk to the “insert person you have difficulty talking to here”?” Is it just a pet peeve of yours? I agree with the above. And I do this all the time.

Part of what I see people are often asking with relationship questions is HOW do I talk to so-and-so about this?

@QC, you should really have a talk with the person in the mirror about this, rather than us.~

You’d be surprised at how often people overlook the obvious.

I agree with others here…sometimes the best fluther answer/advice is to go to the source.
What bothers me more are people who solicit advice and then complain about the responses they get. If you are putting it out there in a public forum you gotta take the good and the bad.

I vote for suggesting that querents might want to talk with the person they’re telling us about. It might be something they sincerely hadn’t imagined.

You are right daloon. I first came to fluther with relationship advice and many of you did point out the obvious that I was unwilling to see. In the end I did what was right for me but it was helpful to get other people’s opinions. Especially the opinions from the opposite sex.

When someone posts a question which is a thinly-veiled attempt to seek validation of their point, I will encourage introspection.
If they are seking advice and help with their relationship, everyone here is more than willing to share our experience- and the common experience seems to be “communicate more, or differently” with the person you are having a problem with.
Of course, if your question is crap, we’ll just let you know. Subtly.

@Knot and others, subtlety might be fine, but I don’t ever see a need for someone to administer a stinging reply to a question that is beneath their intellectual level or to thrash someone for showing poor judgment in directing a question here. There is no reason not to be civil and respectful. If we don’t want to respond to a question, we can move on. Let the mods handle the truly inappropriate questions. It makes Fluther look bad if we greet inexperienced questioners with harsh measures for showing a little immaturity or lack of perspective. And some newcomers seem to be treated to a sharp answer for no reason at all.

I think some of these relationship questions (of which I have seen thousands on a site I used to frequent) are the sorts of things that some people do ask their friends. Some of us don’t, and some of us do. Fluther can be like a group of surrogate friends; that’s one of its chief virtues. Why would there be a need to be unkind?

@Jeruba: sometimes momma holds, and sometimes momma scolds. Momma still loves you either way. :^)

True… but not when you’re a newborn babe. Newborn babe don’t know better.
Jeruba, I couldn’t agree with you more.

@trusting- I hope this site isn’t attracting that particular level of maturity.

@Jeruba: I see a lot of need for administering stinging replies to certain questions. That’s how the quality of the questions and the quality of the responses remains high. I think it makes Fluther look bad if we don’t greet immature or stupid questions with the response they deserve.

If you don’t want to respond to a question, that’s your prerogative. If I want to respond to a question with an admonition that Google is a better place to look or that nobody on Fluther can possibly know what the lovelorn querent’s beloved is thinking, that’s my prerogative.

@cwilbur and others: Look at Jeruba’s very first question here. I remember this very well, because I was completely shocked that our resident grammarian didn’t care to take on this challenge, and some responses were pretty snarky. If Jeruba were not made of strong stuff, we’d have never heard from her again, and that would have been a shame. It has made me rethink some of my own snarkiness to new comers.

There’s an explanation that comes to mind that isn’t very charitable. I think that it is possible that one thing that is going on is people are establishing a pecking order. They want newbies to know they’ve been here a while, and the newbie don’t know shit about the culture here, so shut up until you have paid your dues. In other words, an instinctive kind of hazing ritual.

The other thing that might also be going on is a kind of heightened alertness for the bottom-dwellers in internet society. These bottom-dwellers include folks who appear to be lazy, stupid, or mean. Homework help is considered laziness; bad spelling or grammar or im-talk are considered stupidity; and troll-like behavior is considered mean.

The problem is that people have all kinds of different standards for what comprises laziness, stupidity, and meanness. They also have different ideas about how one (or the community) should respond to these things. In addition, there appears to be no apprenticeship time when people can commit these supposed sins and not get sanctioned. After all, some people may believe they can rise in the pecking order if they properly condemn sins against the community.

Personally, I believe in being kind to everyone. If someone spells differently, I can usually understand them. I can answer instead of refusing to answer and dunning the person for bad spelling. If someone uses bad grammar, I ask a clarifying question, instead of slamming them for a poor education. If someone asks for homework help, and it’s an interesting question, I’ll answer it for the pleasure of answering it. If I don’t like the question, I say nothing. There’s no need to preach at people for trying to do their homework in what we perceive to be a lazy way. We don’t know their circumstances. We don’t know if they a good student or not. We just make a presumption and act on that. It does not speak well of us, I think.

Finally, there is the issue of trolls. I have written elsewhere that I think the proper response, if one believes trolling is happening, is to behave politely, and gather more information, before one throws out accusations. If it is obviously trolling behavior, I don’t think we should say anything; we should just ignore it. Trolls like attention. They like to create anger and hard feelings. If you get angry and attack them, you are doing just what they want.

Shunning works wonders. Many religious societies have used it to get folks to conform to the mores of that society. If people are disciplined, and act as if the troll’s posts simply aren’t there: no reference or response to them, the troll will get bored and go away.

But the other thing is that often times, kindness and taking a troll seriously can convert them. Not reacting defensively, but asking them to explain themselves. If their explanations seem more and more outrageous, then you can drop them. But sometimes the troll label is applied too soon, and these people are seriously trying to participate and learn. So I hate it when people jump to conclusions about others’ motives. I don’t think we can go wrong if we treat folks kindly, with a presumption of good will. We can always ignore things that annoy us. No one is forcing us to post.

Yes because it discourages me to stay on fluther everyday. The fact that it is an opinionated sight and they don’t value it makes me like a tiger who just found the hunter.