More And More Users Complaining Their Questions Aren

What do people not realize when they complain that your question lacks details (on Quora)?

What do people not realize when they complain that your question lack details (on Quora)?There are three types of Quora users, maybe more, (and of course it’s a spectrum, so people fit into multiple categories). Very broadly, the types areReaders. These are people who use google to search for items of interest, and come to Quora through search results. They don’t ask questions, and they don’t answer questions. They don’t find many poorly worded questions, because those questions aren’t high in the google search results, and even if they did find such questions, readers have no interest in improving the content they find on Quora.Writers. These are people who enjoy looking for interesting questions in their feed to serve as inspiration for their writing. This happens to be my main interest, which is why I’m answering this question.Question askers. These are a combination of trolls looking to make some kind of point, high school kids crowd-sourcing their homework, and a very few people asking legitimate leading questions out of curiosity.Poorly worded questions don’t bother the readers, who most likely won’t ever see them, because it doesn’t have any good answers.The writers are most bothered by poorly worded questions, because they’re hard to answer, and, being writers, they’ll post a comment explaining the problem. But they’re not the question askers, so, well, no help there.Among question askers, the trolls don’t care that their question makes no sense. They made their point, and have moved on. The homework crowd-sourcers haven’t bothered to understand the question in the first place, so they have no clue how to fix it or provide details. So we’re left with that tiny subset of question askers who are asking legitimate leading questions out of curiosity. These questions are most likely worded very well in the first place.So, in summary, the questions asked by the few people who give a crap about the clarity of their questions are, by and large, quite clear and detailed to begin with.Does that answer your question? It’s hard to tell, because, as Isaiah Kirk pointed out, your question lacks detail. Not that I would ever complain about that.

When will Quora allow multi-phrase, complex questions?

Quora already does. The mistake that everyone makes is that they assume that when they ask a complex question with multiple parts, it should be asked as a singular question.The better more effective way to ask multi-phase multi-phrase questions is to break them up. Rather than ask: “How do I lose weight and get a girlfriend?” the questions should be broken up into more dissectable and orthogonal questions in the form of “How do I lose weight?” and “How do I get a girlfriend?”.A lot of users complain that the constraints of question limits prevent asking technical questions. I would argue that asking technical questions on Quora is no different than how one would ask technical questions in real life. Scientists don’t ask all of their questions at once and expect them to be answered in one cohesive thesis. They ask individual questions and break them up into individual answers which then get summarized by a more cohesive question and a cohesive answer.The better way to ask a multiphase question is to ask individual questions each with more and more constraints. Alternatively, you should recognize that good questions should result in more questions. Let’s use a personal example.How do pharmaceutical companies develop drugs to treat diseases?That question in of itself is a huge question. I could be interested in making a cure for a specific disease but I’m going to to ask the broader question of drug development from a higher level. What then should happened is I should get a list of subquestions. For instance:What should someone do to discover a new drug or treatment?How do pharmacists discover the action of a particular newly discovered drug?How does understanding of genetics help pharmaceutical companies develop cures for diseases?How can one accelerate the process of finding cure for any disease?What are some good resources for learning about structure-activity relationships in biochemistry?What are the steps of QSAR based drug design?How are Pharmacophores created?These are all questions that could be a part of a multi-phrase question but instead, they are broken up into small concise but independent questions. From the summation of individual questions, an improved understanding of all of the components can be earned. The easy temptation is to assume that because you’re asking the question, they must be physically associated when in reality, the multiple thoughts in your head are actually completely isolated scenarios.

Why are there so many stupid questions on Quora? Aren't people ashamed of such public displays of ignorance?

Why are there so many stupid questions on Quora? Aren't people ashamed of such public displays of ignorance?Would you rather they stay ignorant? Or ask the question, get an answer, and now learn something new?The people that ask dumb questions aren’t the problem this day and age. The person that assumes they have all the answers and don’t need to learn anything is.Asking questions admits you don’t know something someone else might know. It shows an awareness (no matter how small) of your own faults. And being aware of said faults are necessary to grow up and become smarter.I mean, this is assuming the questions you think are dumb actually are. I’ve seen many a people take a question that looks rather basic and whip up some amazingly insightful answer, even if I already knew the answer to the question asked.But if they bother you so much, downvote the one you don’t like so you don’t see it anymore, and move on. No use complaining here about it.