Post History

## The benefits of allowing "easy" questions

The Software site [already had an analogous discussion](https://software.codidact.com/posts/284979) and the consensus came out fairly strongly **in favour of accepting and answering beginner-level questions**. I'm a strong proponent of this idea in general, especially for technically-oriented sites; so I wrote my own answer after the fact, and want to summarize my argument here as well.

* A community that grows and thrives will attract the attention of "beginners", no matter what. **Better to have their questions answered in advance**. It really does cut down on them re-asking - drastically. It may not seem that way, but this is purely due to availability bias. You can't see the questions they didn't ask.

* **Every field in which the concept of "expertise" is coherent, is dominated by novices**. That's built in to the nature of learning, and the nature of humanity. The utility of information depends not only on the significance of the problem it can solve, but on the breadth of its audience. Practically speaking, a community ignores neophytes at its peril; to do so is to knowingly cast a side a huge fraction of the noble purpose it can serve.

Aside from the general argument, I feel that reading the term "power user" and inferring that some measure of **elitism** is necessary, **is missing the point**. In my mind, being a "power user" is more of a mindset: it reflects the intent to take control of one's computer, understand its workings properly, and **treat it as a tool rather than an appliance**. People who recognize that they scarcely know anything about how a computer works, but who seek to take charge in this way, *should be lauded for that aspiration*.

## Difficulty is not quality

On the flip side, allowing the "non power user" questions of "non power users" **absolutely cannot be allowed to excuse** low *quality* of questions. Unfortunately it is often difficult or impossible for beginners to ask the question they *really* need answered - uncovering this question requires the benefit of hindsight that they don't have. (There are several categories of problems here - not just the so-called "XY problem".) However, a functioning Q&A community must expect the people asking questions to try to meet quality minimums (and to work to fix minor issues with questions that don't require the OP's input).

When several failed attempts have been made by beginners at what appears to be the same question, **an enlightened expert can, and should, step in** to extract the essence of the question, phrase it properly, and present question and answer to those who need both.

**A quality question is a prerequisite for quality answers, [and is](https://meta.codidact.com/posts/289687/289715#answer-289715)**:

* **Unique**: it does not duplicate existing questions, but is part of a coherent set of questions that neatly cleave the problem space at its joints, so to speak.

* **Topical**: it is concerned with the primary subject matter of the community (this should go without saying).

* **Clear**: it describes an easily understood problem, in enough detail that a proposed solution can be thoroughly tested. As much as possible, those who test solutions should be able to be confident that they know exactly what should happen in every case, so that they can verify that it *does* happen.

* **Properly scoped**: it does not present a complex task that entails following a series of steps, except insofar as there is a useful question about figuring out what the steps are. Instead, it focuses on a single step - but without *unnecessarily* zeroing in on details that are ultimately *irrelevant* to solving the problem.

* **Adequately detailed**: where an error occurs, it should provide *necessary and sufficient* information to reproduce the *exact problem, directly*, with as little intervention or interpretation as possible. For how-to questions, the input and output to the process need to be specified precisely; if they cannot easily be shown and understood in plain text, there should be necessary and sufficient information to create input and validate output.