Bad answers for bad questions?

Question

Many people can profit from a well described answer to a relevant question. But in practice a good part of the questions in Blender Exchange are asked by people who are just starting out and don't know how to describe their problem. Some have obvious errors in their scene and haven't learned the basics of the features they use.

I think a good answer requires a good question, but what if most of the questions are bad? I feel like one of ten is worth a good answer, and those usually get answered rather quick.

Spam short answers or leave those questions unanswered at all? It concerns me since most of my answers are short and not very interesting.

Answer 1

I wouldn't consider short answer to be bad. On the contrary - if I get to the solution fast without reading an essay it saves me time. I think you are implying answers that contain a hint but are not full tutorials on the matter (like this one that inspired this meta post).

Lot of questions are newbie type ones and for you it might seem obvious (or how to search it might seem easy), but on the contrary it is usually better to go into more detail than it seems necessary (and go full tutorial mode). There is a high probability such question will draw in more newbies and if they don't understand how to get to that solution they might leave downvote. A hint clear to you might not be so clear to a newbie.

An answer containing the full solution (or even related extra info) that doesn't require for additional searching yields the most upvotes.

It is also ok to edit a bad question to make it better searchable, more general or with better tags. This will draw in more people that will see your work you put into the answer. Duplicate questions should be marked as such, yes.

It's not a crime to post hint-like answer, anyone can add another answer and compete with you and for some users the hint might be enough. But there will likely be people not getting the hint and leaving that downvote.

I would summarize it's about estimating the experience of the artist asking (and searching it) and tailoring the answer to that level (or level below).

Answer 2

I think of this site as a collective effort to overcome blender's poor documentation and help others understand how the software works.

Sometimes a lazy or confusing question can open the door to explaining a complex function, or one of the basic concepts without which 3D modeling and rendering can turn into a frustrating experience. We've all been there... So instead of judging a question as being good or bad, think of how you can share what you know and help clear the OP's misunderstandings.

Writing thorough answers, even for simple issues, will only make this site more useful. What matters is not the length of an answer, but its clarity.

If you don't want to answer the quesion, then don't do it, maybe someone else will.

Writing incomplete or confusing answers helps no one.

Answer 3

actually i think that more often people should provide a short answer here. That encourages people to look things up, or to study.

"Your rigging is wrong because you didnt apply scaling first", instead of someone describing the complete rigging process.

As if StackExchange where a wiki site (which it is not) we could as well take down the only site that tries to be the free book of blender, the place where newbies should learn. https://wiki.blender.org/

StackExchange is a site for good correct best answers not tutorials, there are plenty tutorial websites (Linda, youtube, blender wiki etc).

Short answers also make this site load good on the mobile app.

If you dont know how to say things i'd recommend to include the .blend file and add some images as well. People like me just look around here to find unanswered questions with no solution and we still help you, to us it are just funny puzzles. But most of us dont intend to be teachers here, just telling a good correct answer, as this is a QA site.

But even various moderators forget its basically just QA that made stackechange a great site.