Am I a Moocher? If so, what can I do about it? [duplicate]

Question

I am sorry to say my answer to question ratio is not very good. It is not because I don't enjoy helping others, but just because I don't have the expertise of many of the other members. I have no formal software training nor is my day job involved in software, I don't even have any friends involved in software and have to rely on the many knowledgeable members of Stack, and am trying to learn too many things at the same time which makes me a master of none.

Recently, whenever I ask a question, I quickly receive a downvote and often with a close. Note that I have no issues with downvotes. If I am asking bad questions, I should be penalized to correct my behavior, and while not expected, would still appreciate a comment describing my bad doing. Or maybe the voter wishes to enunciate that a given direction is not a good direction, and what better way than with a quantifiable score. And I agree that duplicated questions should be closed to not dilute good answers to a specific question. And if the question asker did zero research and asked a question that clearly has already been answered, sure a downvote is warranted to encourage behavior which doesn't waste the time of Stack's many generous members.

Before posting this question, I searched for various related questions. First, I was concerned that there was a certain answer to question ratio that I wasn't meeting, but couldn't find any quantifiable criteria. When researching, I came across the term "moocher" and thus searched more, and while I read "Moochers suck, no question about it", I don't believe (and hope) that I fall in this criteria. I always spend significant time researching the subject before asking the question. I try to pose the questions so that they will be relevant to others. I provide script and output results when appropriate. If a member posts a comment requesting additional information, I always try to provide it. While I know that a bunch of "thanks" comments are not desired, I always respond appreciatively. I never leave a question with a reasonable answer unaccepted unless I end up answering my own question in which I feel a little shady for selecting myself.

Take my past three posts. I diligently researched each topic before posting the question partially motivated by fear of the looming downvote I was sure to come. But still I hoped, yet within minutes each of my posts were quickly downvoted. I did get one comment on the three and if that individual downvoted my question, I have no issues and am thankful for his or her response. But typically there is no comment, and I believe questions with negative votes and no comments will be ignored by other members even if they are good questions which need answers to help the community.

• What Identifier Generation Strategy should be used with Doctrine and PostgreSQL?
• Retrieve single resource from an api-platform subresource collection
• Configuring api-platform to include header in OpenAPI (AKA Swagger) documentation

Is there an unwritten quota of answers to questions? Are there other obligations and responsibilities which I must be aware of? Am I a Moocher and if so, what must I change to continue being a contributing member?

Answer 1

There's nothing wrong per se with asking more questions than you answer. There are those who say that it's not good, but I disagree; asking questions is a necessary part of any question and answer site such as SE. Asking good questions is a skill, and shouldn't be valued less than writing answers. There's no answer-to-question ratio you need to be sticking to.

With that said, though, if your questions keep getting downvoted / closed, I'd advise you slow down for a minute and try to figure out why. Are they unclear? Opinion-based? Have you explained the problem in sufficient detail?

There's nothing wrong with asking more questions than you write answers, but if your questions aren't being well received I'd advise trying to figure out why before continuing to ask.

Answer 2

Your questions look fine to me. (If I were to offer a suggestion, I'd perhaps suggest putting a succinct question or problem statement at the very beginning or very near it, in order to quickly put the reader in the right frame of mind to follow the detailed explanation - but that's a minor point, as your questions are well written and as far as I can tell contain all relevant details.)

So why were your questions downvoted? Hard to tell what went on in the minds of those people as they clicked the down arrow, but my guess is that since your questions only have a few dozen views, they have probably not been seen by anyone who is able to answer or even has attempted to do something similar. Since you have enough reputation, I'd suggest putting a bounty on the questions (make it 500 points if you're comfortable with that). Most likely that would attract dedicated users who will read and understand your question, and upvote it for being clear and complete, and perhaps even write a useful answer.

To answer your question, there is nothing wrong with having a high question to answer ratio, as long as your questions are well written.