Questions are not a problem, obligation to answer is a problem.
I think if any interaction becomes cheap enough, it can be a problem.
Let’s say I want to respond to ~ 5 to 10 high-effort questions (questions where the askers have done background research and spend some time checking their wording so it’s easy to understand), and I receive 8 high-effort questions and 4 low-effort questions, then that’s fine- it’s not hard to read them all and determine which ones I want to respond to.
But what about if I receive 10 high-effort questions, and 1000 low-effort questions? then the low-effort questions are imposing a significant cost on me, purely because I have to spend effort to filter them out to reach the ones I want to respond to.
My desire to participate in answering questions, coupled with an incredibly cheap question-asking process, is sufficient to impose high costs on me (if I set up some kind of automated spam filter, this is also a cost, and leads to the kind of spam filter/automated email arms race that we currently see, with each automated system trying to outsmart the other).
I think if any interaction becomes cheap enough, it can be a problem.
Let’s say I want to respond to ~ 5 to 10 high-effort questions (questions where the askers have done background research and spend some time checking their wording so it’s easy to understand), and I receive 8 high-effort questions and 4 low-effort questions, then that’s fine- it’s not hard to read them all and determine which ones I want to respond to.
But what about if I receive 10 high-effort questions, and 1000 low-effort questions? then the low-effort questions are imposing a significant cost on me, purely because I have to spend effort to filter them out to reach the ones I want to respond to.
My desire to participate in answering questions, coupled with an incredibly cheap question-asking process, is sufficient to impose high costs on me (if I set up some kind of automated spam filter, this is also a cost, and leads to the kind of spam filter/automated email arms race that we currently see, with each automated system trying to outsmart the other).