Questions about Wiki-editing.

Why are some questions and answers on Quora self-defeating?

• The following list is of types of questions and answers on Quora that I've found to be irritating or meaningless, and therefore self-defeating. I hope my list itself isn't irritating or meaningless, but is useful in causing questioners and answerers to think before posting. 1. Existential questions/answers that ask things like whether there's something, somewhere, that underlies everything else. 2. Verbose answers that don't place the obvious "Yes" or "No" as the first statement in the reply, and go on for multiple paragraphs in rambling discourse and life stories before getting to the point. 3. Anonymous answers, which obviously seek the protection of the 5th Amendment. 4. Questions that up-front demand that you read the entire question before answering, when the question is multiple paragraphs long, with references for off-site reading. 5. Non-sequitur questions, where the second part of a question does not logically follow from the first. Example: If the moon goes around the earth, then why does the sun shine? 6. Vapid questions, like "Why is there air?" and serious answers to those questions. 7. Idiotic questions, such as what are the "core tenets" of atheism "as an ideology." 8. Insulting questions that make statements belittling the intelligence of the very people being asked to answer the question. 9. Interminable answers that go on and on for pages just to discuss the history of the question, and never really give an answer. 10. Questions that need to be explained, edited, refined, redefined, elucidated and restated, until the original question becomes nothing more than a question mark. 11. Answers that in themselves are questions, or that just reverse the proposition of the question. 12. Answers that use such hifalutin terminology that only the answerer knows what he/she said. 13. Answers that, instead of a Yes or No, give "Not necessarily" as an answer. 14. Answers that don't answer the question, but give a truism in its place, such as "Everything is something." 15. Answers that make references to articles on the Internet, and then don't give the links. 16. Answers that use the opportunity to quote only institutional mantras (e.g., church doctrine) instead of individually thought-out answers. 17. Answers that turn what could be a simple answer into a parable or megillah that obscures or dilutes its meaning. 18. Answers that are so long that they need to use footnotes. 19. Answers that are not answers but stories from the life of the would-be answerers. 20. Answers that ask their own questions, unrelated to the original question.

• Answer:

  The original question is: The following list is of types of questions and answers on Quora that I've found to be irritating or meaningless, and therefore self-defeating. I hope my list itself isn't irritating or meaningless, but is useful in causing questioners and answerers to think before posting. Answer:I think the people asking these questions are truly seeking answers, but they appear to be oblivious of how their questions will appear to others. If they would wait a bit, think about it, and re-read the question before posting, perhaps the oddness or inappropriateness would occur to them, and they would rewrite them in a more answerable form.