I wrote “the goal of one crisp answer seems aimed at a childish mentality—except in the (rarer than we may think) cases when there really is one crisp answer.”
which chaosmage unfortunately truncated.
Anyway, more often than not, I at any rate, want food for thought, not “the answer”.
An earlier e.g. from my initial article: <> to which I’d want to add articletype:diy, an expert might indeed provide one crisp answer, somewhat like the “feeling lucky” answer from Google, but I’d feel I was missing something. I’d like to see every relevant answer with some attempt at ranking them. I might prefer a youtube, or I might prefer text, diagrams, and the occasional photo. I might watch a youtube then print out the text version to take out to the garage. Some articles might reference tools that I never heard of, and doubt I could lay my hands on, while others provided ways to do it without those tools. I might watch the youtube with the special tool and the youtube without, and conclude the latter takes more dexterity than I have and that I’d better find a way to borrow that tool.
To the extent people want just an answer, or worse, “the answer” rather than “food for thought” it may be at least in part due to the cultural environment saying “We have the answer!” “Answers at 6:00″, and so on. Then again, in some situations I’d just want to know the answer, or the most popular match.
I wrote “the goal of one crisp answer seems aimed at a childish mentality—except in the (rarer than we may think) cases when there really is one crisp answer.”
which chaosmage unfortunately truncated.
Anyway, more often than not, I at any rate, want food for thought, not “the answer”.
An earlier e.g. from my initial article: <> to which I’d want to add articletype:diy, an expert might indeed provide one crisp answer, somewhat like the “feeling lucky” answer from Google, but I’d feel I was missing something. I’d like to see every relevant answer with some attempt at ranking them. I might prefer a youtube, or I might prefer text, diagrams, and the occasional photo. I might watch a youtube then print out the text version to take out to the garage. Some articles might reference tools that I never heard of, and doubt I could lay my hands on, while others provided ways to do it without those tools. I might watch the youtube with the special tool and the youtube without, and conclude the latter takes more dexterity than I have and that I’d better find a way to borrow that tool.
To the extent people want just an answer, or worse, “the answer” rather than “food for thought” it may be at least in part due to the cultural environment saying “We have the answer!” “Answers at 6:00″, and so on. Then again, in some situations I’d just want to know the answer, or the most popular match.