bhart90 said:Not to be alarming everyone, but she hasn't replied to this post once yet. Just an FYI.
I've seen that a lot in this "Ask a Question" forum. The OP tosses out a question and then either never comes back, or doesn't post. Too bad, because almost every question-and-answer needs more information from the asker before the answerers can give a useful answer. Maybe they don't like to come back and have to say "none of that was useful to me", or take the questions from us as criticism of their question.
My guess is that whatever links lead new members towards this forum, they emphasize the ease of asking, and don't say things like "you have to give enough details that the question CAN be answered", or "Your question will often draw out some requests that you clarify or give more details, so you might have to post more than once.
I think it is a sign of the times that only 1/2 of the askers ever respond to return questions or even say "thank you". Courtesy is out of fashion. Maybe people new to online forums don't realize that it
usually takes some back-and-froth just to establish enough background to answer something.
I often saw this in technical forums for software: if the person asking the question HAD ALREADY KNOWN what all the factors were that the answerers needed to know in order to answer it, that person wouldn't have needed to ask the question.
(Was that grammatical?)
Once I realized that (for software), I realized that I could usually answer my own questions. First, I had to type up a "pretend email" asking the question. Then I would expand the email, trying to anticipate every question they would ask me, in order to be able to give an informed answer. I would try to anticipate the tests they would suggest to narrow down the answer. Three times out of four, by the time I finished thinking up (and
writing down) all the details, I would have an "AHA!" experience and guess the answer.
For some reason, writing things down often made clear to me what my confusion was, or what I was overlooking. If I just
thought to myself, I would cruise right past the answer without seeing it. It also helped to imagine a crowd of skeptical people reading over my shoulder. When I wrote down something dubious that I agreed with, I would imagine someone else saying "Oh yeah? How do you know that?"
Truly: if you know enough about a subject to ask really good questions, you probably already know enough to answer them.
That's why any "Ask a Question" forum has to use the Socratic method, where the supposedly knowledgeable people have to ask 20 complicated questions in order to answer WELL one simple question.
There is supposed to be a Chinese proverb that even the wisest sage can be stumped by a question from a newbie.
My theory is that simple questions often have complicated answers.
But a really, really detailed question might indeed have a clear, simple answer.
