Do we need to write the better questions ourselves?

Question

In the ELL-Post-Apocalypse chatroom, KitFox made a very interesting observation (gently edited here for dramatic impact):

We have gotten diluted with basic questions because basic questions fill our pages. If we want higher caliber questions, people coming here have to see higher caliber questions. They need examples, a standard to reach for. So we should be making sure that the kinds of questions we wanted to have asked are asked every day. Otherwise, users come and see "Is it reason with or reason to?" And they think "I have a question like that!" And they pile on.

I would like to [. . .] encourage our high rep users to post one good question every week on EL&U to help boost the impression of the site (as well as the content).

Now there are obvious objections to this proposition. High-rep users mostly have high reps because they’re really good answerers; and they’re really good answerers not only because they already know a lot of the answers, but also because they already know how to find answers for themselves. Can we live, or keep the site alive, by taking in each others’ laundry? There’s some feeling that we can’t: read the responses to KitFox’ post.

And let’s face it, writing a good question on purpose is really really hard. Much harder than answering it.

But, hey, I’m here for the puzzles. I’m here for questions that make me actually think about what I do instead of just doing it with expert but essentially routine skill. And if the price of my entertainment is that I have to entertain others, fair enough.

So: is the sense of the community that KitFox’s notion is a sound one?—that we should all make an effort to raise the front page profile by writing questions of the kinds we want?

If so, I’ll step up. I'll wash your shirt if you'll wash mine. Hang or fold?

Answer 1

You've already presented my point of view, but I would like to expound a little more.

There comes a point sometime after we hit 3,000 reps when (for many of us) our mindset shifts from contributing via good questions to contributing by closing "bad" (e.g., off-topic, duplicate, etc) questions. Many of us are still avid users, but now we have a special role for cultivating our site.

As we earn more reps, we close more questions and the more questions we close, the more we start looking at questions to see whether they should be closed. Eventually, we stop looking at questions to see if we should close them and instead look at questions to see why they should be open.

But closing questions that we think are not appropriate for the site is only half the work. We need to attract the kinds of questions we want here, and the best way to do that is to provide newcomers with good examples of what is appropriate here.

Answer 2

Questions are the result of problems people have. Nobody can invent a good question, because it would not have any practical value. If it is invented, there is not a real problem behind the question. If you want to write a good article Wikipedia is the right place and not SE.

If 10 people ask 10 times the same one line question, than you can not conclude that this is a useless question. Instead this is a very valuable question, because 10 people had the same problem independently.

The only thing you can conclude is, that either the way to find the answer sucks or people are too lazy to search for the answer, because it is easier to ask the question twice.

But the question itself is a good one.

Answer 3

I've had a small handful of questions I've wanted to ask since becoming a regular. For me, my problem has been, for every question I've pondered so far, it would have been closed as a duplicate. A few examples:

• Is it okay to end a sentence with a preposition? Or begin one with a conjunction?
• Is there an official word for that thing I've often referred to as a "companym"?

As an alternative, would we be similarly encouraged to overhaul what seems like a poorly-written question with some good potential?

Answer 4

"Good questions" do not "help boost the impression of the site".

Good questions are usually left with few votes because the average user has no idea what is being discussed. Those are my preferred type of questions to answer. I actually don't like getting +10 every five minutes. That would mean I answered a 'stupid' question.

If you want to boost impressions, "good" questions need a way of being 'pinned' to a side bar, or something, like featured (I've no idea how or if this should be done; some new kind of bounty? mod votes? high-rep only votes? sounds elitist to me...). Votes from the masses aren't ever going to make that* happen.

*good content rises to the top, etc. - (Popular content rises to the top.)

A high rep user's job is to edit or suggest improvements to turn crap questions into gold mines.

Related: How can we encourage more folks to edit?

EDIT: Don't forget about bounties. More often than not, random new good questions come from new users who abandon them. Then no one wants to put the time in, unless you bounty it.

Bounties are our other job.

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Taken out of context from Why no tag Badges for Good questions?:

This would cause a great increase in questions because of people trying to [do this], which simply prevents people who legitimately need their question answered from getting an answer.