Even if there was no reluctance to asking questions on the part of the readership, the cost of the question-and-response loop would still be very high. For those who write due to a desire to move a group forwards, the following observations of mine may be motivating:
Each question consumes some of a limited supply of (something like) discussion threadcount and bandwidth, decreasing the range and depth of the consideration given the other aspects of a topic.
The resolution of each loop takes time; the full version of the original topic is not completely elaborated until later, in turn delaying the development of discussion based on the fully elaborated original topic.
The resolution of each loop takes time. In some cases, this means that people following a discussion ought to check in multiple times to stay up-to-date with an evolving explanation.
A question-and-explanation is (nearly) invariably longer and (usually) more time consuming to write than a (moderately) artful initial explanation… so a quickly written initial missive is usually false economy, even selfishly.
In a group with multiple productive members, #3 and #4, by increasing the time cost of staying abreast of the topic, may tend to decrease productivity.
(Ironically, my above explanations are too terse. My apologies.)
Sure. But this mostly proves that there is some upper limit, not where it is. And the existence of benefits to explanation (helps the community, often provides interesting ideas), show that there’s some lower limit but not where it is. It’s sort of a Laffer curve situation.
So, of course, by symmetry, people should be spending 50% of their time explaining :P
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a community which did more poorly (than it might do otherwise) because it’s members understood each other’s points too well.
So I don’t recommend worrying about writing too clearly, but rather to either balance your time against the group’s (per considerations like my above points) or to run yourself against some sort of constraint(s), like time pressure or the upper bound of how much you can care.
Even if there was no reluctance to asking questions on the part of the readership, the cost of the question-and-response loop would still be very high. For those who write due to a desire to move a group forwards, the following observations of mine may be motivating:
Each question consumes some of a limited supply of (something like) discussion threadcount and bandwidth, decreasing the range and depth of the consideration given the other aspects of a topic.
The resolution of each loop takes time; the full version of the original topic is not completely elaborated until later, in turn delaying the development of discussion based on the fully elaborated original topic.
The resolution of each loop takes time. In some cases, this means that people following a discussion ought to check in multiple times to stay up-to-date with an evolving explanation.
A question-and-explanation is (nearly) invariably longer and (usually) more time consuming to write than a (moderately) artful initial explanation… so a quickly written initial missive is usually false economy, even selfishly.
In a group with multiple productive members, #3 and #4, by increasing the time cost of staying abreast of the topic, may tend to decrease productivity.
(Ironically, my above explanations are too terse. My apologies.)
Sure. But this mostly proves that there is some upper limit, not where it is. And the existence of benefits to explanation (helps the community, often provides interesting ideas), show that there’s some lower limit but not where it is. It’s sort of a Laffer curve situation.
So, of course, by symmetry, people should be spending 50% of their time explaining :P
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a community which did more poorly (than it might do otherwise) because it’s members understood each other’s points too well.
So I don’t recommend worrying about writing too clearly, but rather to either balance your time against the group’s (per considerations like my above points) or to run yourself against some sort of constraint(s), like time pressure or the upper bound of how much you can care.