Should Yahoo get rid of all the abstract categories and just have categories for simple questions and answers, like, "how do I embalm uncle Joe? Or, should we all just stop pretending we're on here to learn anything about how other people think, and are just here for infotainment??
2007-06-06 17:43:37 · 9 answers · asked by keri gee 6 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Good points all, and my apologies to thatguyjoe!
2007-06-07 09:35:03 · update #1
It's a forum specifically geared to avoiding actual discourse- a "question" followed by an answer and then some stars and flags and thumbs to give an anonymous reaction with no explanation. I put question in quotes because often it's just a lecture, no question at all. Statistically speaking, pretty much nobody asks questions because they care about the answers, they ask questions to make a point or a joke.
The initial question and answer are the starting points from which an actual discourse would begin. The discourse part is specifically avoided by the format, and with it pretty much all hope of really getting better understandings of why people think what they think.
But, to get to your question about eliminating abstract subject matters, heck no. (And not just because, as an uncle named Joe I find disturbing the idea of limiting questions to how to dispose of the corpses of Uncle Joes.) We need a relgion and spirituality section. It gets a lot of use by scads and scads of people dedicated to these topics. It is a way of shunting the religion and spirituality people into their own little room so they don't bother the others who want actual answers to real questions.
Think of the alternative. If I have a question about the torque setting for the Craftsman HV-3850 power wrench when adjusting the bolts on my 1985 Piper Cub aircraft, I don't want a bunch of people telling me that I should worry instead about the One True Faith. Yahoo! needs a place to distract the people who will inevitably talk about religion so that people who can think of other things can ask away with fewer distractions.
2007-06-06 18:00:59 · answer #1 · answered by thatguyjoe 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
How DID you embalm your old uncle Joe??
The categories are fine. Some come to learn, come come to teach. It is nice to have a place to come together for those things.
However, an awful lot seem to come just to heckle and tear down and have no interest in teaching or learning. I sometimes wish that they had there own place (Yahoo for Anuses maybe?), because they get in the way of either teaching or learning.
The only shortcoming I see is that there is no true give and take like on the Yahoo forums. But then, YA is so much bigger than any of those individual forums that give and take discourse would be virtually impossible.
2007-06-07 00:54:39 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well, it encourages point gaming, answering only questions that you are likely to get best answer for, and one-shot drive-by responses. I think intelligent discourse is often despite, rather than because of, the format.
But it is fascinating as a social experiment. There are people here that I would never run into in the ordinary course of my life, or that I would never discuss religion with. The motivations behind some positions have become more obvious to me, and the religious state of the US and the English-speaking world is quite different from my neck of the woods.
Perhaps it isn't intelligent, but it is educational. And that's good enough for me to keep coming back.
2007-06-07 00:51:03 · answer #3 · answered by Doc Occam 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Yahoo!, by restricting you to one answer per question, has created a forum that encourages you to put your best foot forward when posting (or to be very funny.) The repetitive nonsense gets boring pretty fast, as do the people who post it, which is why you don't see a lot of veterans here.
2007-06-07 00:47:49 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
I often reply to questions with the intent to actually discuss things reasonably. However, sometimes we like to get a little silly here, so i answer funny questions with my best attempt at humor. But I never answer serious questions with ridicule or sarcasm. I consider that improper, on a personal level at least. Regardless, I think everyone should feel free to answer questions however they wish to, but I'm a libertarian.
2007-06-07 00:51:13 · answer #5 · answered by seattlefan74 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Satan is busy stirring up atheism and his anti-God representatives.
There will never be a question answered only by intellectuals when you have such a broad audience as this.
My advice is to participate only in the questions that raise serious issues or pose thought-provoking inquiries. Ignore the rest.
2007-06-07 01:06:21 · answer #6 · answered by Roxie J Squared 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
no. otherwise people would not be able to answer questions and get their points unless they had expertise and yahoo answers would only be full of those with good educations.
2007-06-07 00:47:34 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes, it does.
Now off to the corn dog questions...
2007-06-07 00:47:42 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
No but intelligent forensics.
2007-06-07 00:47:55 · answer #9 · answered by son of God 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋