this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



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[–] [email protected] 149 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year 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”.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

"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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I appreciate your work. (sincerely)

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year 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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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year 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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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year 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 1 year ago (2 children)

Or it might just be offensive or a dog whistle.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year 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 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Is Dooku fast?

Fuck it, bark bark bark bark bark bark

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year 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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s such a bad example for a good definition

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 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] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

If an answer was downvoted on NoStupidQuestions, was it too stupid or a serious reply to a joke question?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Simple answer is : yes

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year 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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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year 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 1 year ago

Do we have a highthoughts sub for questions like this?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

This is why I stick with kbin. did you downvote me? would be a shame if I literally never find out.

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