I downvote a lot of posts here because I don’t think they’re questions appropriate for this community. They’re either loaded questions, opinions, obvious bait, or asklemmy material.
If this community is supposed to be the Lemmy version of r/nostupidquestions, the questions should be things that you think should know but don’t. Things that might make you feel stupid asking.
A good question for this sub is “How often do I actually have to wash a hoodie?”
A bad question is “Why is [company] doing [something anti consumer]”
We get a LOT more of the latter here.
A similar problem would happen on r/ELI5 that drove me nuts. Originally the kinds of questions you were supposed to ask were things like “the origins of the Gulf war” or “the rules on how to play poker”. But instead there were too many questions that were like “what’s going on in my stomach when it growls”.
That might not be the best counter example. Now I’m interested in why exactly my stomach growls, and would probably need it explained in simple terms since I’m not a doctor.
“Can someone explain [complicated geopolitical conflict] to me like I’m 5?” were my least favorite. At least pretend you tried to get the answer yourself
I appreciate your work. (sincerely)
I just wish it did anything lol
Okay but like, how often do I actually have to wash a hoodie?
You should wash your hoodies (and jeans) when they are soiled, sweaty, or smelly; if they’ve been wet; if they have any sort of chemical on them.
Your situation will vary, and thus you must rely on your own judgement.
And basically always if someone you meet says you need to wash it.
Well yeah, if you go around people. If you don’t know how to wash a hoodie, you’re probably not a social butterfly. I do know how to wash a hoodie and I’m not a social butterfly, so I can’t imagine what it’s like not knowing and still trying to speak to someone.
I’ve been a teacher who had to tell their student it was time to wash their clothes, even if they weren’t a social butterfly
I was just making a bad joke which correlated social skills to hoodie washing ability
Mate, that read exactly like a typical title on r/lifeprotips.
It’s that good or bad?
It was a funny reminder of how mundane the typical “Life Pro-Tips” were.
LPT: always wash your clothes if they stink!
Ah, gotcha
I don’t know!!! Someone should pose the question in a post
Sometimes.
Ah, I wasn’t familiar with the subreddit, so I was just taking it as a free for all, so no question is out of place. Especially as lemmy is smaller, and lacks enough traffic in niche communities, it makes sense to have a bigger community for just answering whatever comes to mind.
But obviously there’s issues with that, if the community was swamped it would make sense to have a stricter guideline.
I mean if this is gonna be a catch-all for every question ever, why do we need it when asklemmy exists?
Guidelines make communities unique. And why did we remake the sub if we weren’t going to continue the spirit of it?
Totally. I was just being descriptive not prescriptive. I wasn’t aware of the sub, and thought this was a fun lemmy thing, particularly suited to its smaller user base. And I’ve always associated asklemmy / askreddit with asking people’s opinions, wanting a broad range of answers.
Looking at the guidelines, there doesn’t seem to be any guidance about what kinds of questions beyond “ask away”. The rules are mostly about no trolling, NSFW, etc. So, my comment was giving the perspective of someone who didn’t associate the community with a reddit thing, and the message it’s giving off is “ask any question” and that seemed cool to me. But I have no problem at all with it being more specific than that, having explicit guidelines or just a culture of up/down certain types of questions. Community guidelines and specialisation are good! But with lemmy smaller user base more broad communities can also be good!
I think most people don’t like to see obviously leading/rhetorical questions, but I’m (personally) happy with seeing more abstract, whimsical, or interesting questions than just "stuff you feel like you should know but don’t ". Looking at the top posts in the community, there are some “what is wage theft/a sovereign citizens/etc” which seem to be the classic “everyone else seems to know something I don’t” situation. Then there’s a bunch of fediverse, corporation and tech industry opinion questions, which definitely do seem more like an asklemmy thing. But “can you live on pickles?” or “would nuclear weapons be useful in a space battle” are the kinda questions I think are fun and I generally enjoy reading the responses and learn something, but they’re not “stuffy you should be expected to know” (well, maybe the pickles answer is pretty obvious, but the reasoning isn’t necessarily…)
The asklemmy ones are the annoying ones. It’s less a question and more a conversation starter
There’s one up now that’s basically “can someone recommend some songs to me?”
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perhaps you need a refresher… NO. STUPID. QUESTIONS.
Perhaps you completely missed the point if that’s what you choose to reply with
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But those aren’t stupid questions, they are questions very smartly crafted to imply a certain answer or legitimize a problem. Then they are not stupid, but smart. And often evil.
you mean like telling people how ‘you’ disregard some questions in a sub that’s supposed to be open to any and all questions because ‘you’ feel like ‘you’re’ too important to take them seriously?
lol!
Well, mods could remove the downvote button if it’s not supposed to be used.
it’s misused anyhow, just like reddit. imagine that.
Serious answer, the question might be one that broke one of the community rules like Rule 5 (“No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda”) or Rule 6 (No meme or troll questions, except on Fridays) and voters are expressing their displeasure.
Silly answer, the question wasn’t stupid. The name of the community is actually “No, Stupid Questions.” The missing comma is a typo.
That reminds me of the Simpsons “no money down!”
I know, I couldn’t resist the urge to make a Lionel Hutz reference.
Yes.
If anything is heavily downvoted on Lemmy, the most likely cause is that people don’t like what it says. On rare occasions downvoting is used to correctly identify wrong information or rule breaking content, but most of the time people use it as an “I agree” or “I like this” button.
So if a question here is heavily downvoted, its probably because people don’t like the question, despite the necessity of such questions.
Yes.
If an answer was downvoted on NoStupidQuestions, was it too stupid or a serious reply to a joke question?
Either option is viable. Depends on the question. Usually things are either downvoted because it’s too stupid to be a legitimate question and it’s clearly just someone being inflammatory, or it’s a question that, while arguably stupid, doesn’t really fit with the idea of the community.
“What are your thoughts on photosynthesis” is a post that’s -2 right now. It’s probably getting downvoted because it’s just a fucking question. It’s kinda stupid, but only in the sense that I have no clue what they’re wanting to hear about photosynthesis. It doesn’t fit the community. Goddamnit I still instinctively type subreddit. It would work better for a general discussion community.
Sometimes there’s a rare question that’s actually incredibly stupid and clearly not someone trolling, but they give zero further information. Like “Could time start moving faster due to climate change?” How do you answer something like that without knowing how the hell they came to that conclusion? “No.” isn’t exactly a satisfying response, but it’s pretty much the only one you’ve got.
Hell, your question isn’t a particularly great example of a ‘no stupid questions’ question. It’s really more of a shower thought.
Yeah, I figured I’d get more relevant answers asking it here rather than !showerthoughts@lemmy.world or anywhere else. It is a bit meta though, might have been better posted on Friday
No but, you see, climate change increases entropy, which does something to time, I think.
Simple answer is : yes
The problem is everyone is going their own way with it.
I’d upvote this post. It’s spot on.
People have their own reasons for downvoting. NSQ is for questions that could be considered “stupid” by people in more judgmental settings. When I downvote NSQ posts it’s because I suspect soapboxing or an agenda, not an honest question. Or, in some cases, because it seems people take “no stupid questions” as an outright challenge.
If you down a question that is actually made in bad faith, just as you’ve done here, down is completely justified.
It means it’s boring.
Could be a lot of people see it on their feed but don’t know what community it’s from, and they don’t want to see it so they downvote. Especially when people are browsing local or all.
I know lemmynsfw.com had that issue where people would downvote stuff on local that they didn’t like, even though it was a good post for the community it was posted to
Do we have a highthoughts sub for questions like this?
Neither. It’s because the question does not belong in the community for other reasons, such as being off-topic, or encouraging heated responses.
