To interact with this page you must login. Signup

Is it a problem that a few of the best answers on Quora only briefly address their question before going off on a long tangent?

If so, how could it be remedied?

quora

technology

understand

tynamite

I have never seen such questions on Quora, so it's not as big a problem on Quora as you think it is. Quora is a website where people with no knowledge on a topic, ask questions about it, and expect to understand instantly the answers on it. That's not how learning works.

When people write short answers that answer the question fully, they are asked to explain themselves so that other people can understand it. See Why do some people write such long answers on Quora Below is my answer for why I write long answers.

Because every time I explain something in a short answer that make sense, I always get some person comment on my answer saying they don't understand.

Maybe if you think these questions go off on a tangent, that you could either suggest improvements and leave a comment in the bottom box on what you don't get, or comment on the answer for some clarification and understanding on the topic.

If they truly are the best answers as you say they are, the chances are that the answer wasn't explained simple enough, or without a 101 for people without background on the subject at hand.

See Why is it that so many of the answers on Quora are written over the average person's head?

Here's my answer for it

Because the whole point of questions being organised with Topics is that people who are already knowledgeable
in those topics can follow them and increase their existing knowledge
about them.

Newbies don't really follow topics they don't know about, so it's only fair that topic followers will attract knowledgeable people with background knowledge. What this means is that when we see a new question or answer answered to a topic we're following (because we're already knowledgeable) we'll see no need to add further explanation in our questions for answers

Look at it this way

Look at my mini bio. ...... Do you find it practical for me to go into the
Gardening, Comics and Fine Art categories; and expect to understand the
top rated answers to questions in those topics?

That's what I thought. If you want a newbie's guide to all things on Earth, I'll refer you to h2g2. Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/alabaster/home

Reason 2

People are beginning to use Quora as an excuse to be lazy, and not do any research. This causes some people to ask stupid questions, and ask intelligent questions and expect to understand every word. Quora is not a substitute of going to Wikipedia which is a secondary source, and then researching your primary research. My answer for Why might many Quora questions seem obvious? applies here, for those sort of people.

Because people can't be bothered to use Google. Technology is the new religion that gives us all the answers

.

It's just how Microsoft Word made people worse at spelling when it came out. Why think, when the computer will do all the thinking for you?

We've gone from using Google to search for information; to using Siri and Quora.to reverse the search. Instead of learning how to use Google properly, we can ask all our obvious questions here, and have the information come to us.

Reversing the search.