Are we just too good at research?

In talking to another user on here at the ASIS&T annual meeting this week ... we lamented that when there were really good questions on here, they tended to be really difficult to answer.

So, my theory is that as we're members of a field that includes tasks such as searching for information, we're not going to ask the questions that are easliy answerable. Asking for possible sources to find an answer to a objective question would be better than asking the question directly ... as at least then we won't have to ask again the next time a similar question came up.

Am I wrong? Or are there other issues that we need to consider about this community as a whole that might make using the same limitations on questions as other stack exchange sites problematic?

Joe

• discussion

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• jonsca: Thanks for expressing your opinion on this. For further discussion see this Meta post. I want everyone to keep tossing around ideas about this so that we *can* find some sort of happy medium. Programmers.SE has gone through a lot of growth in trying to incorporate quality subjective evidence into answers to practical problems and maintain constructive questions, and I think that we can learn a lot from them in the long term. I don't think a detour completely away from the SE
• jonsca: philosophy is prudent (as it has borne fruit for a diverse group of sites), but I think that we can learn to work within it and provide a viable source for people to exchange their ideas (albeit in a question and answer format). Anyway, I won't weigh in any further on this yet, I want to hear from as many users as possible (and constructive dissenting opinions are welcome). We've had some passionate responses to the other Meta questions, and we are listening.

Answer by Jakob

Good point: to some degree libraries.SE is too academic. Yes it's called "Libraries and Information Science" but this should not mean to limit on scientific questions. I'd like to see more how-to-questions, beginning with fundamentals such as "Where do I find a particular book?". Members of this community should know the basics, but can we explain to other people?

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• jonsca: Asking about suppliers and such would be fine, if that's what you are getting at, as long as there is some criteria upon which the answers can be judged. I think what we're most concerned about right now is questions that start out "how does your library do..." which regrettably just degrade into discussions. A wide variety of topics have found a home here on SE, and I don't think libraries will be the exception to that, but the key is to put some questions out there and see how they fare.
• Mary Jo Finch: I am admittedly a renegade on this subject, but I think "how does your library do" questions, while they may not generate a definitive answer, are extremely useful for the librarians who frequent this site. If there is a definitive answer, most librarians can find it on their own. What is wrong with a question that has more than one good answer? Why should we limit our universe to questions that have one best answer?
• 1. Alan Thomas II: I will reiterate my position on this: A pure "How does your library do . . ." question is useless, but an attempt to discover undiscovered public knowledge in the form of asking for and voting on best practices with a definite and clearly stated objective to be achieved by said practices is entirely constructive even if we have to talk about it some to figure it out. (C.f. the last section of http://meta.libraries.stackexchange.com/a/165/345 for my original answer.)

Answer by Canadian Girl Scout

Currently this site has a nice bundle of users (nearly 800), but the fact that it is only generating 0.5 questions per day will not keep these users interested or engaged enough to check back in often. On the genealogy beta site, there has been similar discussion on whether or not to include how-to-questions as @Jakob suggested. The quote I particularly like is, "If we don't address those types of questions in some form then we have no chance of maintaining a viable community. You can only ask so many questions about research methods."

I've just posed a how-to type question:

How to build a Dewey number for a Hanukkah/Christmas interfaith item?

This describes a very practical problem that I have been pondering and trying to solve for a few days. Hoping that the community here sees the value in drawing in these types of information seekers and does not close the question.

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