"Chicken and egg" problem for our "too broad" decisions

Question

I have been noticing a chicken&egg problem (Ie: The classic "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?").

People ask questions because they don't know the answer, obviously, so they want help from those who know better. But question askers cannot possibly be expected to ask those clarifying questions first before the question they had in mind when they don't even know what clarifying information others will want. That is often literally impossible.

I actually anticipated this in my question How much fish can a saltwater angler catch per day?, assuming there would be the inevitable "We can't answer because X, Y, Z, A, B, C, etc... you need to tell us what those parameters are first." Preemptively, I created the secondary question What are the variables that will significantly affect saltwater fishing success? at the same time.

Both of those questions have attracted close votes. In Why can't we get the question rate up?, one of the comments suggests

It would help if high quality questions were not frequently closed on technicalities.

and from ab2's answer to that question

Someone always suggests that the real experts on ELU should ask more questions, and one of the responses always is:

When I have a question, I can usually find the answer pretty quickly myself.

And ELU is not very welcoming to neophytes who ask conceptually simple questions.

Do we have a similar problem: (1) that the most expert users here know or can deduce the answers to the few things that puzzle them, and (2) we are not welcoming (or are somehow intimidating) to very basic questions from neophytes?

I decided to open up and ask more questions because there seems to be a general consensus that more questions are needed. And I'm trying to make them good.

I am right now writing such a sub-sub-question. But really, in my mind, it should have been the other way around.

• Q: "How much fish can I catch?" A: "It varies a lot. A few days with nothing on a bad day to a few hundred pounds on a good day."
• Ok, cool, now I want to know what causes it to vary as per answer... Q: "What are the variables?" A: " - Fish type targeted affects it in such and such a way. - Whether or not you use a fish finder. - ..."
• Ok, cool, I wonder how fish type affects it... Q: "What fish should I target for situation X?"

and so on..., but instead I get hints about what an answer might be and then have to do those questions in reverse order, and that is quite obnoxious.

So which comes first, the question or the sub-question?

Answer 1

There is no paradox.

But question askers cannot possibly be expected to ask those clarifying questions first before the question they had in mind.

Yes, they can, and they should. The first paragraph from How do I ask a good question?" in the Help Center says the following:

Search, and research

Have you thoroughly searched for an answer before asking your question? Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you found and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, and above all, it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer!

So, in the case of the particular fishing question, yes, the asker should be expected to know that e.g. different parts of the oceans will have vastly different results, and that knowledge should be reflected in the question.

Additionally, from the Help Center, questions should:

Be specific

If you ask a vague question, you’ll get a vague answer. But if you give us details and > context, we can provide a useful answer.

The value of SE is in the specific questions and specific answers. If you want to know what fishing conditions to expect where you are going to vacation, then ask for that information. When you make the question broad and vague, the usefulness to you and to everyone else goes down. That's why you've received negative feedback, and why you perceive hostility to "conceptually simple" or "basic" questions.

That's also why for the most part, this site and SE sites in general frown on questions that fish for answers of the "give me the values for every possible X" variety.

Answer 2

In the tour of the site, one of the bullet points of "questions to avoid" is "Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer". Your questions about saltwater fishing seem to fall squarely in that category. People have written thousands of books about "What are the variables that will significantly affect saltwater fishing success?". The answer to your questions can't be usefully summarized in paragraph or two, or even in a page or two.

As @whatisname wrote, the SE format is geared to providing specific answers to specific questions. If you are completely ignorant of a subject, SE is (to my mind) the wrong place to start. It's no crime to be unaware that a subject is much broader or deeper than you may have thought, but once you get that information, the appropriate response is to take a step back and build some general knowledge. That may mean you have to fall back to such old fashioned methods as reading books, or at least studying a few dozen of the millions of articles on subject linked to by Google. I don't mean that you should skim the background material looking for the paragraph that answers your current question, I'm suggesting you should study the material so you'll have enough background to frame an answerable, specific question.

I don't think the site simply needs more questions, it needs more good questions!

Answer 3

I don't know anything about fishing except what I've read in books like Men Against the Sea (Captain Bligh's journey in a small boat across the Pacific after he was kicked off the Bounty) and Surviving the Extremes by Ken Kamler, MD and a few accounts in magazines and newspapers. Thus, I have not voted on or commented on any of the recent fishing questions.

About all I know is that there are places in the ocean where flying fish will literally jump into your boat, that there are places in the ocean where fish are very scarce, that there are places where the available fish roam the deeps, but are rare on the surface -- and that the oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth's surface, according to NOAA. I've read several accounts where the people adrift couldn't catch any fish, but were saved by spearing a large turtle.

Thus, I think that any fishing question that does not identify what part of the ocean the OP is asking about, or what drifting (or sailing) route the OP is asking about, or what fishing conditions (if one had good gear) the OP is asking about, is too broad.

To make my answer more general, not just about fishing, one has to know something before one can ask a question that is focused enough that it can be answered without an answer that starts out with a long list of assumptions.

To get back to the fishing questions, if, for some reason, I had to write a fishing question from my platform of ignorance, I would reread Men Against the Sea and build my question on their fishing experiences on their 3,168 nautical mile journey from close to Tahiti to Timor in what is now Indonesia. I'd pick that book for my research, because it is an absolutely un-put-downable read.

Answer 4

From the tour

Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do.

Avoid questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer.

On the first you want a number for the entire east coast. You provide no information on the gear you have. A small boat cannot fish some of the larger fish. Clearly too broad.

On the second what are the typical significant factors that are known to affect such fishing? There are whole books on that.

On the third you have narrowed it down to the North Atlantic. Still too broad. When asked for a specific location your attitude is prove to me I need to. That is not how this site works. You refuse to narrow it down to a even a specific state.

You don't have a specific question you have a concept.

You lack research. If you would just pick a state you could google state saltwater fish and get an answer.

I plan to fish out of Portsmouth New Hampshire in month in a x foot boat and a range of y. What species of fish can I expect? Now that is a specific question. But is also a question you can just Google.