I've decided that every time I am consciously asking myself while I'm working on a Drupal site how to accomplish something, I'm going to ask it on drupal.stackexchange.com. This is because I will forget the answer and here the questions are indexed so I'll have an easier time finding them again. Yesterday returning to a problem I had faced a month ago without remembering that I asked the question here, I started typing the question again, and, of course, my original question popped up while I was typing so I didn't ask it twice, nor did I realize until after I clicked it that I originally asked it. There is virtue in well indexed information such as this example demonstrates.
Nevertheless, I am using somebody's time since quite a few people will see that question. Am I being fair asking a lot of questions? Is it fair to ask a question about Drupal that I already know the answer to only to be answered by myself the next day? Yes, it should be considered fair because like on Stack Overflow I will eventually get very few of my question published. It's amazing how many questions I have that are answered either by Google linking to Stack Overflow or similar question popping up while I try to create a new one. Unfortunately, at this time my Drupal-centric questions don't lead here.
There are other benefits to Stack Exchange. I noticed several months ago I passed a certain threshold where none of my questions were being answered anymore on drupal.org's forums. This is because they, the questions, must have reached a level of complexity that only a small number of people could answer and then they would quickly fall to the bottom of the stack. On the other hand, on Stack Exchange people go out of there way to find an unanswered question.
There is no such thing as a bad question only questions asked badly. What does that mean? Let's examine this for a bit.
I have two years experience mucking around with Drupal in my spare time and before that I didn't even know what CSS was. How do I build the biggest and best Drupal website in the world?
This is a valid question. Those of us who use Drupal ask ourselves this question each and every day. Why shouldn't it be a valid question? The answer isn't getting a PhD in CSEE from MIT -- it's cooperation. It comes from everybody consolidating and indexing their knowledge not leaving it as 'an indiscriminate bolus'.
The question might not belong on drupal.stackexchange.com for a couple of reason. Mostly, no one person can answer this question. What they can do is ask several questions and fight about it. A bunch of us do know several things so hopefully someone will ask what would be the width of the side column of this best website ever. I got this one because it's easy, well, to me. The answer is 220px.
While the first question is too vague, the second about CSS, although pertinent, interferes with our indexing to stave off our 'indiscriminate bolus'. This last question will dilute the base of knowledge about Drupal. Like Pirsig's analytical knife we can describe the system in several different arbitrary ways. Nevertheless, we need to agree to stick to a taxonomy just for the sake of simplicity and organization. (The question what do you mean Pluto is not a planet doesn't belong here either.)
So far a question needs to meet two requirements to be appropriate. It can't be so vague that it is answered with other questions and it can't dilute the knowledge base of a particular topic defeating the purpose of indexing.
Still there isn't such a thing as a bad question, there are only poorly asked questions. What is a poorly asked question?
