How many questions is too many?

5 Answers
Oct 28, 2017

No, of course not!

Explanation:

We all are here to learn. There is no such thing as a "bad answer"(as long as it follows the rules) or a thing such as "asking to many questions"(if they all are related to learning).

So, to answer your question, No.

Oct 28, 2017

Not at all.

Explanation:

In fact it is usually the case that what one person asks there are many others thinking of the same question but are afraid to ask!

Oct 28, 2017

No, but...

Explanation:

... keep in mind that you must keep the number of questions you ask to #5# or fewer per day. That is, you cannot ask more than #5# questions in a #24#-hour period.

We started using this question limit because we want all the students who ask questions on Socratic to have more or less the same chances of getting answers.

The way we see it, letting some students ask #10#, #15#, or even more questions in a couple of hours would not be fair to the students who only ask #1# or #2# in the same time interval.

So you can ask as many questions as you want--we have students who have asked hundreds of questions on Socratic--as long as you don't exceed this limit.

Nov 11, 2017

Hmmm...

Explanation:

Your question kind of presupposes that there is such a thing as "too many" questions.

From the perspective of allowing others to get fair attention for their questions, it does make sense to ask a moderate number of questions at a time.

If asking many questions is a result of genuine curiosity and willingness to learn then it seems very good to me.

However, I remember one student who asked about 8 questions which were basically identical except for different parameters. Several contributors including myself answered the various questions, but when there were one or two left I messaged the student to express my concern. It seemed to me that they were just trying to get answers to copy rather than actually learning how to solve such problems themselves. I suggested that they try to apply the methods demonstrated to answer their own remaining similar questions.

I think I speak for most contributors in saying that we want to teach. We want to help students to learn to be able to solve these kind of problems themselves. That will ultimately be best for both the student and the contributor.

So if you have several problems of the same type that you are stuck with, it would probably be best to ask one or two on Socratic, try to understand the solution, then apply the same techniques yourself.

Nov 11, 2017

In certain circumstances.

Explanation:

Sometimes people ask a question that has already been answered. Before asking a question I think you should take a moment to see if someone already asked it. It can get frustrating to see a question asked when you already spent time to clearly answer it.