Is it appropriate to post questions more often than one provides answers?

Question

I am new to this site. I ask questions more often than I provide answers. Is there any rule that says users should also provide answers instead of just posting questions which interest them?

Answer 1

Stack Exchange exists to build a resource of knowledge that will help future visitors for years to come. In order to accomplish that goal and live up to that ideal, we need a steady stream of both great questions as well as great answers.

The thing about answers is they need questions. If no one asks questions, there's nothing to answer.

What's more, there's a reason you gain reputation for asking questions: It takes work. As a question asker, you give back to our community by asking good, on-topic, well-researched questions, and you've taken the time to read How to Ask and ensured that your question fits our Q&A format.

Look around Stack Overflow at some negatively scored questions, as well as some positive ones. For those in our community who aren't programmers, you should do this exercise too. It doesn't take a programmer to see that the positively scored questions include plenty of details to understand the problem faced, while the negatively scored questions are sloppily-written and leave potential answerers guessing at what the real problem is. In many cases, askers come back and leave comments on those folks posts stating that the answer isn't what they were looking for. When you've answered a vague question and come to find the asker wasn't clear, that's a huge waste of time for everyone involved.

Looking through your questions, they're all positively scored -- except one closed and deleted post -- and all of your questions have attracted nice answers. So in summary, if you don't feel confident in answering questions, yet you have the skills to ask good questions, I strongly encourage you to keep posting, be open to feedback and to collaborative edits to make your posts shine, and contribute in the best way you know how, by asking good questions.

As an aside, posting questions and answers isn't the only way to contribute. Here are just some of the other ways you can help grow our site:

• Make suggested edits to posts needing grammatical or formatting fixes. See Does our site need active editors?

• Use the "share" link below questions and answers to share interesting posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. This helps attract more visitors to our site.

• Start discussions on Reddit -- and other discussion sites -- by sharing links. (Be sure to use the links in the "share" box, which gives you credit for any unique visits from those links.

• Vote up good content. You have 40 votes per day you can use. Voting helps give other people enough reputation and privileges to help run our site. See Don't Forget to Vote on Questions and Answers! for more details on how voting helps.

• Flag content you see that doesn't fit the site scope. Flagging brings content to the attention of moderators and even high rep users. See A guide to moderating PMSE as a member of the community

• Visit our chat room - The PMSE Notice Board to participate in the discussions we have about certain questions and the site in general.