"Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?"
Not much, what is going on with you?
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
420 points (96.7% liked)
No Stupid Questions
39969 readers
1202 users here now
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.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Even when we converse, we get across just one point at a time. You have to respect other people's time and bandwidth (Okay, one or two points).
Yes because when are conversing in person you are conversing synchronously.
Only one person talks at a time and for the most part only one major subject idea question or problem is considered at a time. You talk about one thing and then you move along and talk about another thing.
This is not necessarily the case with written language. Where you have the benefit of talking about many things, changing subjects, and listing information out. And the reader can work through this at their own leisure and at their own pace without feeling overwhelmed
I've had my fair share of issues with not getting a complete response from e-mails. And so I changed the way I look at it. It's not like it will take weeks to get all the information you need just because you didn't get everything in one go.
load more comments
(4 replies)
How are the questions formatted?
This. Use bullets or bold each question so the number of questions is clear before each question is fully read.
In a workplace environment, I shouldn't have to format emails as if they're to be read by a 12 year old.
load more comments
(9 replies)
It's not that they "insist" on not answering, they just have limited reading comprehension and/or attention span. With experience you learn to ask exactly one question in an email, and maybe you'll get an answer some of the time, and if you're lucky it will be coherent.
It really is a sad State of affairs that reading comprehension is so bad that people can't answer questions in written form.
I mean it's literally written down you can't miss it.
And to clarify this is more of me complaining because I've experienced this a lot. It's most apparent in online discussions, where seemingly a majority of what you say gets completely skipped missed or misinterpreted and replies often focus on just a couple words of your statement instead of understanding sometimes even just a whole paragraph.
It is a sad state but it's like the weather, you can complain about it or dress for it.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Sometimes I'm busy man and trying to get something done
Poor reading comprehension skills are more prevalent than we think
The level of frustration from online discussions when the things you say are entirely missed or misinterpreted is a great example of this.
Even mildly complex topics that touch anything politically charged or emotionally charged tend to be subject to groupthink dynamics in a format where group think is largely just a result of poor reading comprehension.
54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level). source
load more comments
(2 replies)
You can mitigate most of it by having extremely clear emails that are fast to read, with clearly numbered questions.
Eh, still about 50-50 with these people. I've sent an email with 4 nicely formatted and numbered questions and had them respond only to question 3. Like... You read some of it, decided to answer one, and then give up with no other acknowledgement? Shit is wild.
I run into this when texting my mother.
She'll ask the same thing from 2 different perspectives (probably a better word but I can't think of it atm). Both are technically the same question, but I can't just say "yes" it "no", because it answers the question from just one or the other, but indicates the opposite from the other question's pov. Or sometimes needing to know between 2 possibilities she asks about one and then follows it up asking about the other.
For example, if we've recently met up to see my baby niblings (not even sure if this is a common use word, but I mean my nieces/nephews, aka her grandchildren), she could ask "Could you send me the photos you got in a text?" And then she would follow up with something like "Or did you already send them to my email?"
Now, I can't say "yes" or "no", I have to spell out what I did.
Other times it will be a question that she knows I picked one of the 2 options, but instead of just "did you do option A? Which would allow a quick answer "yes" which conveys that I did A, or I could say "no", which would indicate I did option B. One word, clear defined message. But she'll (sometimes during the process of replying- oof that's frustrating), she'll add "or did you do option B?" meaning I now have to spell out what I did.
I like efficient communication, and hate wasting a lot of words. And I'm any other circumstance, a 1 word answer works so well to convey the entire thing. But she almost always throws in a wrench by adding another question that conflicts with the ability to do that.
Just say "Yes" and let her figure out what you meant.
Lmao I wish. I still usually try it, sometimes the timing can imply what I mean. But she always asks.
Probably has to do with her liking using extra words. I say the following without a trace of exaggeration.
If she's in a room with any person she's familiar with, she seems to have a complete inability to stop talking, other than if the other person is replying.
There can't be silence at all. Lately she's slowed down a little because she's gotten hooked on her Facebook feed, so she gets distracted. But even this just slows it down. She really just likes talking and hearing voices.
Whereas I only really engage in topics of interest or points of contention. She will literally try to repeat past conversations ad nauseum if she runs out of ideas.
I really can't tell if she likes talking or being talked to more. But given that growing up, none of us (her children) share this trait, she usually is the one to fill the gaps. I feel like she thinks her mouth and ears are the bus in the movie Speed. If the words being spoken per minute drops below some imaginary quantity, she'll explode.
So, answering with a should-be-sufficient-but-is-now-vague answer, she'll use that as a launching point to another subject too.
It's rough in the streets lol
I've been reading the responses and it reminded me of the class I took called Business Communications, where they emphasized that CYA style communication was absolute nonsense, your responsibility when communicating is to convey information in a way that can be received, and if that doesn't happen it's your fault, not the recipient's, you can't control them only you.
So if this is just one person who misses all the questions, sure, it's them, but you still need to figure out how to get your answers. If it's everyone, it's you. Maybe these questions aren't amenable to email, maybe it's your format, if you want answers (and not just to prove you asked in some sort of gotcha game) you need to ask the people who aren't answering why they aren't.
Everywhere I've worked, people answer these by choosing a different font color and writing answers back in the email, but there are not a lot of questions by email. Maybe a note to "provide answers in BLUE" with the word blue in blue font would help?
Ah, one of my top complaints about digital communication. Doesn’t matter if it’s SMS or email, someone plainly doesn’t read the entirety of what you wrote even if it’s relatively short. Irritatingly sometimes taking another two follow-ups regarding the exact same subject or question ending up with both parties likely getting frustrated.
Digital communication is near instant. It's not like snail mail where you have to cram your letter with as much information as you can, or it will be ages until the next reply.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I've gotten passive agressive / aggressive about this depending on the person.
Now if I ask more than one question and they only answer one, I'll just forward them the same email again with the first question struck through.
As per my last email…here’s the same email again.
Human communication isn't perfect. Some people have too many emails. Others need cues only audio visual interaction can provide to quickly parse info.
Use numbering, paragraphs etc.
Its their responsibility to read shit but its yours to be clear and concise.
On average a communication has more readers than writers, so it is better for writer(s) to use effort in order to save effort on the behalf of the reader(s).
This was especially true in the days of mailing lists and me having to beat TOFU users about the head with a clue-by-4. But, it remains true today. The median communication might be 1 to 1, but it's much more frequent for additional readers to be added that additional writers, so maximum effort with writing is still true.
But, man, it is annoys the heck out of me when I compose informative, contexual email/SMS with several open-ended questions and get back: "yes".
Big shout out for enumerating questions. Makes it clear you need an answer for each one. Makes it easier to follow up if you need more info on a particular question. Makes it easier to pester the person with "hey, I need an answer to 2 by EOD or project deadlines will be significantly impacted" (copied to your PM).
People's poor reading comprehension is annoying. But the right move is to do everything you can to get the answers you need, creating a polite paper trail as you go. Usually the other person will get you the info you need sooner if you pester them enough, with the implied threat that you are building a case against them if the project is delayed. Because if they don't answer your questions in a timely fashion when you do everything possible to get the answers you need, it is their fault.