I originally arrived here from the mathematics stackexchange website. I'm also interested in TeX, but I am by no means an expert. I found out I have asked 10 questions already, and provided 0 answers. Is it okay for me to keep asking questions, while making minimal contributions to the answers here?
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14You have used your free trial of TeX.SE!! Now you have to pay!! :) Of course that's perfectly fine. We are here to exchange knowledge and not keep up with user stats. Just be a good sport and that's all you need. If you like an answer vote & accept, that would create a mild satisfaction and a sense of usefulness for the answerers.– percusseJul 29, 2018 at 12:28
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7Good questions (typically with a MWE that demonstrates the problem) are always welcome. It doesn't matter if you don't answer any. There are some of us who have answered but never asked. You can also help the site by voting other questions and answers.– Nicola TalbotJul 29, 2018 at 14:49
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@NicolaTalbot I think users who never asked questions should finally ask one :)– SkillmonJul 30, 2018 at 12:37
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1@Skillmon Some of the users here worked on the LaTeX kernel. It's hard to imagine what kind of question they'd have that the rest of us could answer. :-)– Nicola TalbotJul 30, 2018 at 12:48
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3@NicolaTalbot David could for example ask, what I had for lunch today. I assure you no one of the kernel team can answer this :)– SkillmonJul 30, 2018 at 14:29
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3@Skillmon This is true, although I have a sneaky suspicion that it might be closed as off-topic. :-)– Nicola TalbotJul 30, 2018 at 14:31
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2@NicolaTalbot: There are lots of question that David could ask: What is documentation for?, How is reading documentation not cheating? How to write xii.tex to make it more readable? How to translate picture mode to tikz, etc... :-) :-)– Peter GrillAug 1, 2018 at 20:27
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3One thing you could do is to try to make the questions as generic as possible and not too specific to your current problem. That way it could help out other people in the future. I try to do that (but don't always succeed) and often end up getting the "Why the heck do you want to do that" (so now I try to include that info as well). so, go ahead and ask...– Peter GrillAug 1, 2018 at 20:36
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1Out of curiosity, do people get given grief if they ask more questions than they answer on Maths SE?– cfrAug 3, 2018 at 2:34
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@cfr I have no answer. All I know is that many of the top users ask no questions at all.– user1337Aug 3, 2018 at 4:41
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@Skillmon I'm sure you ate Duck.– David CarlisleAug 6, 2018 at 18:40
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@PeterGrill I could ask what colour are trees in California– David CarlisleAug 6, 2018 at 18:42
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@DavidCarlisle yesterday I did, but today I only ate salad for lunch (which sadly didn't contain any duck meat).– SkillmonAug 6, 2018 at 18:58
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@DavidCarlisle: They are all black now with the fires. :-)– Peter GrillAug 6, 2018 at 21:34
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1 Answer
Is it okay for me to keep asking questions, while making minimal contributions to the answers here?
Absolutely!
A high quality contribution is a high quality contribution.
Other people may have the same problem that you are having and if you've already asked a good question they can find the answer and that's great. You can also get the information you need to enjoy your (La)TeX-ing. And maybe with time you'll learn more and get better and be able to help others, but it doesn't matter if not.
There are some users here who are the complete opposite.
Our top five users have just 108 questions between them, but 41,666 answers and 2,188,246 rep points.
The top two have no questions between them, but 25,526 answers and 1,131,507 rep points.
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1Did you you mean to say that "A high quality question is a high quality contribution"? Jul 29, 2018 at 23:53
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1@Circumscribe it means: Making good questions contribute to the site...– user134500Jul 30, 2018 at 0:01
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3@Circumscribe I didn't actually =) What I meant was a high quality contribution, whatever form it may take, whether it's a question or an answer, is still a high quality contribution. And therefore valuable. Doesn't matter whether you're asking questions or answering them, it still counts :)– Au101Jul 30, 2018 at 0:21
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8Maybe if TeX.SX had been active 30 years ago, I could have made some questions. 😉– egregJul 30, 2018 at 22:00