A month ago, I asked a question about getting a black eye. I didn’t expect much of a response, but boy was I wrong. The question is sitting at a score of 74, with 14 answers and lots of discussion.
The problem is, it’s a bad question.
- 14 answers, repeating variations of the same three ideas- lie, don’t lie, and don't worry about it.
- Many answers make an attempt to answer my specific situation instead of making it relevant to others.
- The question produced a lot of discussion, not content. Dozens of deleted comments and the question is now protected.
- The only answer I would consider accepting is in a comment.
In my view, the main causes of this are:
- The question is interesting and dramatic. A black eye is a lot more fun to think about than how to navigate a mundane workday.
- The question made it into the “Hot Network Questions” list, which brought a lot of eyes that are not aware of how the Workplace community functions.
- The question leaves room for speculation. I left out the details to keep the question from being specific to my circumstance, and that generated a lot of discussion and speculation.
- The community disagreed with the premise. A significant amount of the discussion revolved around disagreeing with my concern that a black eye would feed into the office gossip machine.
Can questions like this be handled differently to prevent the high moderator workload and low community value?