Over many years of using messageboards, forums and reddit, I’ve had the ‘search, don’t ask’ ethos drilled into me, the idea being that creating new threads to ask simple questions is a bad thing because it decreases the signal-to-noise ratio of content.
But now that we’re trying to grow a new platform, it occurs to me that a lot of appeal in established platforms is the searchable index of knowledge that has come out of people’s questions being asked and answered.
In light of that, do you think we should be creating question posts more enthusiastically to build up our library of information, even if it might be stuff that could potentially be answered by doing a reddit search?
The whole premise of asking basic questions is flawed. A wiki is perfect for answering 95% of peoples questions, so do that instead.
Discussion forums are great for complex, esoteric issues. But few people have those. Most have basic questions, so if you want bland content for the sake of it then go right ahead. Bye bye signal to noise.
Wiki has knowledge but not questions which can make answers harder to find when all you have to enter into a search is the question. If someone else has asked the question your searching then the answer pops right up but if not then you would need to refine your search or read about large amounts of unrelated info to get the specific bit you want. Having knowledge referenced by questions about that knowledge makes that information more available to the masses.