Over many years of using messageboards, forums and reddit, I’ve had the ‘search, don’t ask’ ethos drilled into me, the idea being that creating new threads to ask simple questions is a bad thing because it decreases the signal-to-noise ratio of content.
But now that we’re trying to grow a new platform, it occurs to me that a lot of appeal in established platforms is the searchable index of knowledge that has come out of people’s questions being asked and answered.
In light of that, do you think we should be creating question posts more enthusiastically to build up our library of information, even if it might be stuff that could potentially be answered by doing a reddit search?
A lot of people on kbin are here because we don’t support reddit anymore, and we are especially displeased with spez holding decades-worth of accumulated knowledge and content for ransom.
Even if they’re questions which could be easily found on reddit or with a Google search, I think it’s a good idea to ask them here (and on other instances) anyway. It will give those who are boycotting reddit a new space to search for answers, it will foster more content creation on kbin, and it will decentralise the combined niche knowledge and expertise of all netizens, so that it is less likely to be lost or held hostage again.
I think it’s also a good starting point for anyone who is usually a lurker, but would like to create quality content here to promote community growth. Ask a question you could easily search (or maybe one you already know the answer to?)
We can come together as a community to ask and answer those questions, rather than each user trying to single-handedly create valuable content from scratch, which is much more daunting.