Does a question which shows no research, no effort deserve a downvote?

Question

Does a question which shows no research, no effort deserve a downvote? If the answer is yes, I would like to know the reason behind it.

Answer 1

Absolutely it can be downvoted. Even the tooltip on the downvote button mentions a lack of evidence of research as a reason to downvote. Stack Exchange has never looked kindly on gimmethecodez questions, whichever of the network’s sites they appear on.

Medica's referred you to the Help text; the supplementary question “So how much research is necessary?” has already been asked. The answer at that question is based on a specific example, but can be readily applied generally.

^{[Source: ELU "Ask Question" page]}

The point is that doing the research may actually present you with the answer; and even if it doesn’t then if you quote your research it tells others where not to look, or they may be able to point out how you have misinterpreted what you found. If you don’t present your research, then any answer which contradicts what you found won’t be able to explain why it’s contradictory, and that won’t really help you. If you didn’t use the best resource, you might even get advice on the research itself: where best to look for the answer to the question asked. None of that is possible without knowing what you did yourself to look for the answer to your question.

And of course, if the question is interesting and you have already found the answer, you can even post both yourself: double points!

[And just for the record, I vote on questions only occasionally and I don’t believe I’ve downvoted any of yours.]

Answer 2

Did you search the help section before asking this question? If you did, can you show us what you found, and what you're having a problem with? No? Hmmm... that means I have to do it for you, even though I'm not blessed with more time than you are.

Well, here goes... searches... Ah! Here you go.

In the help section, under How do I ask a good question?, the first "tip" is:

Have you thoroughly searched for an answer before asking your question? Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you found and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, and above all, it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer!

This implies that a question not showing research is worth less than one that does, and, in my opinion, is worthy of a down vote from whomsoever wants to confer one for that reason.

If you think this is {sarcastic}, well, you're right. This is because this concept shouldn't be news to you. (I will speak only for myself here: I tend to cut new users a lot of slack. You, however, have been here for over a year. And, while I usually try to be helpful rather than not, I don't really like it when people complain frequently in meta over perceived injustices, then argue with the people who answer them.) If it is actually news to you, please accept my sincere apologies, and please take the site tour and visit the help center for guidance on how to use this site.

Answer 3

Einstein once said, if I had 60 minutes to solve a problem I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the right question to ask, and 5 minutes on the solution.

Thinking of the right question to ask requires both effort and research into trying to answer it yourself.

So the answer to your question would be "yes," and the reason behind it is that the learning process is most efficient when actively pursued (PS I did not down vote this question).

Answer 4

This is a generality:

The more effort you put into a question – which includes sharing at least a summary of the research you did prior to asking the question – the better your question will be received by the community.

Similarly, when a question is vague about whether or not any research was attempted at all, that question will be more vulnerable to a negative reaction from the community.

This doesn't mean there's always a direct relationship between the amount of research included and the ultimate upvote/downvote totals. Everyone has their own criteria for upvoting and downvoting, and more goes into it than mere research effort. However, you can help people take your question more seriously when you include your research, and you open yourself up for a more harsh reaction when you deliberately elect to omit it.

As for the reason behind it, that's not too hard to figure out. If you expect us to do your legwork for you (especially when a tool tip says, "This question does not show any research effort"), then each qualified member of the community has the right to cast a downvote, as a way of collectively encouraging more research in future questions.

Answer 5

Glad to see you're working through Shakespeare. I hope to do that myself some day.

My philosophy to "downvotes for no research/effort" is: Not always. (See the addendum.) If votes are important, the question must have something going for it. My personal rationale is: If it's new, interesting, or applicable (i.e., I've been wondering about it too) to me, then I upvote. For my upvote, it does not need research or effort if it has these.

Also remember that votes are (mathematically speaking) a function of the community, which is a function of its members and their (individual and social) attitudes -- all of which are functions of time. Just because a question has a poor reception now does not mean it will always have it.

Because votes are a trendy bunch, I think it's best not to pay too much mind to them. But I know from my own experience that that's easier said than done.

The reason Andrew Leach provides, that research aids in getting the right answers, is important. But because not many of the questions in the addendum seemed to have that problem, I do not think it's a good reason to justify the stance that "all questions that do not show research deserve a downvote."

So I offer another possible explanation for that rationale: In a moral lifted right off the pages of Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I think we recognize Quality when we see it but we don't completely know what makes a thing Quality. So we turn to encouraging "symptoms" of Quality in our questions. After all, there are lots of poor questions that don't show any research and there are lots of good questions that show plenty of research. We thus make research/effort a rubric for what makes a question a Good Question or an asker a Good Asker. But we must be careful not to become too accustomed to such thinking, or we will miss out on interesting questions because of the complacency that can rise from habit.

I am skeptical of using research and effort to discriminate good questions from bad. I maintain there are situations where it's difficult to provide research in the conventional sense. And I think making effort compulsory can lead to questions that undermine themselves in trying to demonstrate it.

---

Addendum

The 18 questions below are drawn from the 50 highest voted questions on ELU to date. Given with the questions' links are their current DOWNVOTE/UPVOTE tallies and dates posted. They are sorted by recency. Most are older, but some are relatively new. The first one below, posted earlier this year, has 3 downvotes and is just a question, a picture, and a transcript of the text in the picture.

Short Half-Question, Half-Intro/-Example

3/104 I don't get this joke. Is it some kind of play on "water, too?" 18 Feb 2014

3/191 Is there a phrase that means sleeping with someone without sex? 28 Jan 2014

0/67 Is "believe you me" proper English? 11 Apr '11

0/132 Is there a word or phrase for the feeling you get after looking at a word for too long? 3 Dec '10

3/137 Do most languages need more space than English? 14 Sep '10

0/83 Can "doubt" sometimes mean "question"? 2 Sep '10

0/158 What is the factual basis for "pirate speech"? (Did pirates really say things like "shiver me timbers"?) 18 Aug '10

1/87 Should I put a comma before the last item in a list? 10 Aug '10

1/142 Is there a correct gender-neutral singular pronoun ("his" vs. "her" vs. "their")? 5 Aug '10

0/75 What’s the rule for using “who” and “whom” correctly? 5 Aug '10

Research Mentioned but not Shown

0/95 When should I use an em-dash, an en-dash, and a hyphen? 28 Aug '10

0/107 Why do English writers avoid explicit numerals? 15 Aug '10

Only Questions

0/92 What the #$@&%*! is that called? 15 Oct '12

10/108 Differences between slang words for breasts 19 Jan '11

0/67 Why should the first person pronoun 'I' always be capitalized? 5 Jan '11

1/147 How are "i.e." and "e.g." pronounced? 12 Aug '10

1/82 Which words in a title should be capitalized? 5 Aug '10

0/79 When to use “that” and when to use “which”? 5 Aug '10

Answer 6

Regardless of whether a question demonstrates effort, or research it should only be down-voted if it breaches the ideals of a good question for this site.

Typically the only way to write a good question is to do as the help guidelines say, put effort into researching your question to the point of being stuck, and then put in the effort to write a detailed and clear post; hence why those actions are suggested. However researching a subject comes with no guarantee of results, and some people can write masterpieces with the swish of a finger. The point I'm trying to make is that down-voting is not about what the OP demonstrates, it's about whether the question meets the site's criteria. Researching, and putting effort into a post are not a requirement, the help page regarding how to ask a question calls them "tips".

here are some tips

• Ref: https://english.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask

The site's help pages do not define what a good question is, but the requirements are that a question be one that you cannot find an answer for, (this doesn't mean you have to have looked for an answer, only that if you did you wouldn't find one), and that it fit in one of the white-listed topics.

Questions on the following topics are welcomed here:

    Word choice and usage
    Grammar
    Etymology (history of words’ development)
    Dialect differences
    Pronunciation (phonetics and phonology, dialectology)
    Spelling and punctuation

Ref: https://english.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

if your question isn't adequately answered by [common online internet resources], feel free to ask here on English Language and Usage Stack Exchange. Be sure to mention the research you've done and what you're still hoping to learn!

• Ref: https://english.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

Answer 7

I would like to point out a point which many users might overlook. Coming up with a good question is not trivial. Even if the answer could be found by Google, the chances are you would never come up with the question, let alone with the answer.