this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024

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No Stupid Questions

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No such thing. Ask away!

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If a question is downvoted on !nostupidquestions, is the question too stupid or was it not stupid enough? (lemm.ee)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/nostupidquestions

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[–] glimse 146 points 4 months ago (8 children)

I downvote a lot of posts here because I don't think they're questions appropriate for this community. They're either loaded questions, opinions, obvious bait, or asklemmy material.

If this community is supposed to be the Lemmy version of r/nostupidquestions, the questions should be things that you think should know but don't. Things that might make you feel stupid asking.

A good question for this sub is "How often do I actually have to wash a hoodie?"

A bad question is "Why is [company] doing [something anti consumer]"

We get a LOT more of the latter here.

[–] theedqueen 18 points 4 months ago (2 children)

A similar problem would happen on r/ELI5 that drove me nuts. Originally the kinds of questions you were supposed to ask were things like “the origins of the Gulf war” or “the rules on how to play poker”. But instead there were too many questions that were like “what’s going on in my stomach when it growls”.

[–] glimse 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

"Can someone explain [complicated geopolitical conflict] to me like I'm 5?" were my least favorite. At least pretend you tried to get the answer yourself

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[–] hamFoilHat 5 points 4 months ago

That might not be the best counter example. Now I'm interested in why exactly my stomach growls, and would probably need it explained in simple terms since I'm not a doctor.

[–] Styxia 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I appreciate your work. (sincerely)

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[–] bustrpoindextr 11 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Okay but like, how often do I actually have to wash a hoodie?

[–] OldManBOMBIN 14 points 4 months ago (8 children)

You should wash your hoodies (and jeans) when they are soiled, sweaty, or smelly; if they've been wet; if they have any sort of chemical on them.

Your situation will vary, and thus you must rely on your own judgement.

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[–] glimse 5 points 4 months ago

I don't know!!! Someone should pose the question in a post

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Sometimes.

[–] Acamon 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ah, I wasn't familiar with the subreddit, so I was just taking it as a free for all, so no question is out of place. Especially as lemmy is smaller, and lacks enough traffic in niche communities, it makes sense to have a bigger community for just answering whatever comes to mind.

But obviously there's issues with that, if the community was swamped it would make sense to have a stricter guideline.

[–] glimse 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I mean if this is gonna be a catch-all for every question ever, why do we need it when asklemmy exists?

Guidelines make communities unique. And why did we remake the sub if we weren't going to continue the spirit of it?

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[–] eronth 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The asklemmy ones are the annoying ones. It's less a question and more a conversation starter

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[–] [email protected] 111 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Or it might just be offensive or a dog whistle.

[–] half_built_pyramids 45 points 4 months ago (1 children)

ive wanted to make an alt account and name it something like dog, and just bark at comments that hurt my ears

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Do it

[–] half_built_pyramids 4 points 4 months ago

Is Dooku fast?

Fuck it, bark bark bark bark bark bark

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (4 children)

What's a dog whistle?

[–] TootSweet 20 points 4 months ago

Frequently how it shows up on "No Stupid Questions" is that they're pushing a bigoted agenda under the guise of "I'm just asking a question and everyone's attacking me for it." Like if someone came to No Stupid Questions and asked (and this is just an example, not my position at all) "why is there so much trans propaganda on Lemmy?" or whatever. (And in the thread when people are like "you're a bigot" they respond with "I didn't say anything bigoted. I just asked a question.")

But yeah. Like what Xtallll said, it's more generally using language/symbols that for the in group is a reference they'll all get but for everyone else at least retains an air of plausible deniability. Often it's done by politicians (particularly right-wing politicians) to try to straddle the fence between the extremits and more moderates in their party. If a politician speaks in support of "states' rights," they'll get the vote of the extremists who know that "states' rights" actually means racist policies and also the moderates who still think or perhaps are still deluding themselves that it means somthing vague but more benign.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

urban dictionary Dog whistle is a type of strategy of communication that sends a message that the general population will take a certain meaning from, but a certain group that is "in the know" will take away the secret, intended message. Often involves code words.

Republicans say they want to make civil rights for gays a state issue, which is really just a dog whistle strategy for saying that they will refuse to grant equal rights on a federal level.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That’s such a bad example for a good definition

[–] half_built_pyramids 7 points 4 months ago (6 children)

Hmm I wonder why muscilunge said 88 million in this tweet? It could have been any number, right? Why 88?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1596439328338890752

What do you think, dog?

Just a dog: bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

An actual dog whistle sounds at a frequency (?) inaudible to humans but is heard by dogs. The “secret phrase” can be said out loud, but like the whistle, only the big dogs hear it - the rest of the humans don’t. Does that make sense? It’s used as an analogy.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Serious answer, the question might be one that broke one of the community rules like Rule 5 ("No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda") or Rule 6 (No meme or troll questions, except on Fridays) and voters are expressing their displeasure.

Silly answer, the question wasn't stupid. The name of the community is actually "No, Stupid Questions." The missing comma is a typo.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Rule 5 (“No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda”)

That has the problem of blocking genuinely stupid questions that could be used to educate away ignorance. Instead the only people willing to answer their questions are nut jobs with an agenda. E.g.

Do black people sun burn?

Would get downvoted for being racist cos everyone must know the answer to this (I don't)

Where does the 'Jewish conspiracy' originate from?

Everyone would assume you're antisemitic instead of educating you on conspiracies by Nazis and Russian slike The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But you know who does answer? Those conspiracy theorists who are more than happy to give you (wrong) answers!

Do women get horny?

Everyone assumes an 'incel agenda' cos it's OBVIOUS what the answer is. No it's some poor 13yo kid who's unsure about things so they asked. But you know who does answer (wrongly) those questions liberally? Andrew Tate is FULL of answers and sends them down a very dangerous rabbit hole.

I can't help feeling a lot of the modern shift towards alt-right bollocks is an almost elitist attitude that everyone has an agenda and there's no such thing as ignorance anymore. I'm sure that was QAnons next level goal. Sow distrust in people so they refuse to answer questions (downvote, shutdown, ignore) while providing (wrong) answers to people themselves.

As I've gotten older I've come to realise Hanlons Razor covers SO much more than people realise.

Stop assuming malicious "agendas" behind everything. At the least don't downvote things. At best answer people genuinely.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

To answer the three bolded questions, yes they sun burn, the birth of Christianity, yes and possibly more often than men do.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

People with darker skin do get sunburnt, but it tends to take longer than for people with lighter skin.

It's important to note that this is for light vs. dark skin, not just "black" vs. "white" people.

Some white people can be darker, and some black people can be lighter. It depends more on how much melanin is in someone's skin, not necessarily which parts of the world their ancestors came from.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

That has the problem of blocking genuinely stupid questions

It sure does. If only people would avoid trying to slip shit under the radar, there'd be no reason to consider genuinely stupid questions with such suspicion.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

I didn't say I'd downvote in those situations. I would guess that Rule 5 needs to exist for a reason. Without it the community could get overrun with ragebait posts. Personally I wouldn't consider any of your examples questions to be ones that violate Rule 5, but I'm not a mod and I don't make or enforce the rules. I also wouldn't downvote such a question myself, but I would consider reporting it if it seemed like the OP was consistently trying to pull the conversation into fractious territory. Anyway, if we want to to discuss the rules and downvoting vs. reporting, that should probably go in a meta post.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Every so often, Robert Evans from Behind the Bastards mentions this. I want to know what it is so badly, but also don't want that shit in my search history

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I've been on the internet since '98, I've had worse in mine so here ya go rofl (mind the wikipedia notations, I wanna inform but I'm also lazy):

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Russian: Протоколы сионских мудрецов), or The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion (Протоколы собраний ученых сионских мудрецов), is a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. It played a key part in popularizing belief in an international Jewish conspiracy.

Beginning in 1933, distillations of the work were assigned by some German teachers, as if they were factual, to be read by German schoolchildren throughout Nazi Germany,[1] although the text had been exposed as fraudulent by the British newspaper The Times in 1921 and by the German newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung in 1924. Today, it remains widely available in numerous languages, in print and on the Internet, and continues to be presented by antisemitic groups as a genuine document. It has been described as "probably the most influential work of antisemitism ever written" since it emerged from Russia shortly before World War I.[2]

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Holy shit thank you. I'm always in the car or somewhere where you can't just casually look something like that up, and by the time I get home I forget. Also the whole feeling awkward about looking it up. It seems like one of those oddly specific things where you kinda have to already know what it is to ask about it (if that makes sense), so it seems suspicious to be asking questions about it

[–] Zerlyna 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That reminds me of the Simpsons “no money down!”

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I know, I couldn't resist the urge to make a Lionel Hutz reference.

[–] FlyingSquid 20 points 4 months ago

Yes.

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes.

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[–] RightHandOfIkaros 11 points 4 months ago

If anything is heavily downvoted on Lemmy, the most likely cause is that people don't like what it says. On rare occasions downvoting is used to correctly identify wrong information or rule breaking content, but most of the time people use it as an "I agree" or "I like this" button.

So if a question here is heavily downvoted, its probably because people don't like the question, despite the necessity of such questions.

[–] andrewta 10 points 4 months ago

Simple answer is : yes

The problem is everyone is going their own way with it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Either option is viable. Depends on the question. Usually things are either downvoted because it's too stupid to be a legitimate question and it's clearly just someone being inflammatory, or it's a question that, while arguably stupid, doesn't really fit with the idea of the community.

"What are your thoughts on photosynthesis" is a post that's -2 right now. It's probably getting downvoted because it's just a fucking question. It's kinda stupid, but only in the sense that I have no clue what they're wanting to hear about photosynthesis. It doesn't fit the community. Goddamnit I still instinctively type subreddit. It would work better for a general discussion community.

Sometimes there's a rare question that's actually incredibly stupid and clearly not someone trolling, but they give zero further information. Like "Could time start moving faster due to climate change?" How do you answer something like that without knowing how the hell they came to that conclusion? "No." isn't exactly a satisfying response, but it's pretty much the only one you've got.

Hell, your question isn't a particularly great example of a 'no stupid questions' question. It's really more of a shower thought.

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[–] trolololol 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I'd upvote this post. It's spot on.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

People have their own reasons for downvoting. NSQ is for questions that could be considered "stupid" by people in more judgmental settings. When I downvote NSQ posts it's because I suspect soapboxing or an agenda, not an honest question. Or, in some cases, because it seems people take "no stupid questions" as an outright challenge.

[–] Krudler 4 points 4 months ago

If you down a question that is actually made in bad faith, just as you've done here, down is completely justified.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Neither. It's because the question does not belong in the community for other reasons, such as being off-topic, or encouraging heated responses.

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