Timeline for Why try to answer if you're unfamiliar with the question?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
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| Oct 16, 2013 at 22:41 | comment | added | Debra | @JourneymanGeek thanks for clarifying re. the downvotes and meta. It wasn't intended as a useless question, and I wasn't really taking those personally so much as trying to understand the process and responses. Even a downvote is meaningful beyond a number. | |
| Oct 16, 2013 at 22:38 | comment | added | Debra | It's a good thing that I have a sense of humility! @allquixotic, you said "...let's assume that you yourself were on vacation in the most wonderful place on Earth for 2 weeks starting this past weekend, and you never saw this question until almost November." I'd say it would be answered by any of the remaining 198,999 subscribers who know about Word's form fields or are willing to google or read the help file. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one! (And I -am- new, at least as more than a reader, to all the SE sites. And not pretending otherwise -- much to learn about how things work.) | |
| Oct 16, 2013 at 22:20 | comment | added | Journeyman Geek Mod | Metas work differently - while on main sites a downvoted question indicates a lack of research or general crappiness, on meta a downvote simply means they do not like your ideas, and do not, in fact, want to subscribe to your newsletter. Downvotes are nothing personal here, and do not (unlike MSO) affect reputation in any way. | |
| Oct 16, 2013 at 17:26 | comment | added | Ramhound | @Debra - People have been telling you why they disagree with your question here, and on a meta website, its really a "agree" "disagree" type deal anyways. Most people will not agree with your viewpoint, because its not your typical, Superuser viewpoint. | |
| Oct 16, 2013 at 15:01 | comment | added | allquixotic | See here -- BTW it's applicable to all SE sites, including SU | |
| Oct 16, 2013 at 14:39 | comment | added | Debra | Thanks. I didn't ask this to be popular, rather to understand. But I wish those down-voting could say how they think I could improve my question, rather than what seems to be "I don't agree with the perspective you presented". On the other hand ... realistically, yeah, I'm the newb, I'm not pretending to understand it all, and I'm still mastering how the site works. "HV" is helpful conceptually; I just hadn't seen this behavior before in my stunningly long (ahem) tenure here. | |
| Oct 16, 2013 at 14:09 | comment | added | allquixotic | And, eh, removed my downvote from the OP, after thinking about it some more. :p | |
| Oct 16, 2013 at 14:09 | comment | added | allquixotic | Anyway, your OP here on meta -- the original question you asked -- asked about the general case of "why try to answer if you're unfamiliar with the question", for which I believe I've provided a fairly forceful why in favor of doing so. On the other hand, the particular SU question you posted as an example is more of a case of the would-be helpers not understanding the definition of a term that the OP used. I don't think that's a huge problem, but they could've googled the term and figured it out without asking the OP, too. | |
| Oct 16, 2013 at 14:07 | comment | added | allquixotic | In the particular case of your question, you may have a point that asking the OP to clarify something that any serious answerer is going to have to know, is wasting the OP's time to some extent. On the other hand, let's assume that you yourself were on vacation in the most wonderful place on Earth for 2 weeks starting this past weekend, and you never saw this question until almost November. Who would help this user? The other guys who tried to help. And in all likelihood, they'd have eventually figured it out. Is it really wasting OP's time if we solve his problem eventually? :) | |
| Oct 16, 2013 at 14:04 | comment | added | Debra | I have to give you an upvote just for mentioning "help vampire", a term I've never heard before! [And I hope I'm being clear that I don't think people should be restricted to just answering questions where they are overflowing with expertise; I've already been asked this week "How did you find that answer so fast?" on something I simply researched and said so.] | |
| Oct 16, 2013 at 14:01 | comment | added | Debra | Thanks. Your response seems very sensible to me; I wouldn't advocate "silence is golden", just more common sense. In the case cited, it's a basic feature that's been in the program for over a decade, and it's easily found in the Help file or in thousands of places via google etc. Isn't that where one should start, before asking the OP to explain it? Note, I did ask the OP to clarify what version of Word he was using, but I guess I feel that the concept of a "form field" isn't something the question-asker should have to explain. | |
| Oct 16, 2013 at 13:55 | history | edited | allquixotic | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Oct 16, 2013 at 13:45 | history | answered | allquixotic | CC BY-SA 3.0 |