I read a Freeakonomics blog entry on “Why is ‘I don’t know’ so hard to say?” the other day – you can catch it as a podcast as well.
It was pertinent because we were just launching a new facility on the Sea Kayak Wales news page to allow our members to ask questions of the sea kayaking community. We were aware that for some people asking a question is hard – in some fields and circumstances it is hard to let others know that you don’t know something.
We know from having run a support forum for a product dedicated to a specific field of knowledge that many professional practitioners (in that meadow at least) are reluctant to reveal any chinks in their armour. They would avoid asking questions in a public arena and always try and elicit a private response.
These experts were very reluctant to ask their peers for help – although (we divined) they were collectively grateful when we published an anonymised answer for all. This always felt strange – we thought not knowing everything was the normal.
I have an almost endless list of things I don’t know. I enjoy finding out though – and then in many instances promptly forgetting the answers again. Modern technology allows the comfort of just having to remember where you can find a given answer - not the detail of the answers themselves. You might be amazed at the trivial data I just can’t be bothered to commit to memory.
More importantly though – any software developer is very aware that it is impossible to accumulate expertise on everything – in any case “everything” grows at what feels like an exponential rate. People who work with technology (and software in particular) get used to not knowing the answers.
Some Internet Question and Answer sites are of a questionable value – indeed many are simply designed to flood the search engines and to catch up the unwary into a flood of advertising (and worse) – they truly “don’t know”. Others are supported by a community of users who are happy to share their ideas in the knowledge that others will help them in turn.
We aim to make the Sea Kayak Wales site just such a resource – not just for Welsh coastal trips but for every aspect of sea kayaking anywhere. We hope that Sea Kayak Wales (well the site users) will know and will be happy to answer your questions – beginner or expert without prejudice.
We also hope that questions that have no answer are identified by the community as such – we can debate them, perhaps decide on some effective strategy – but if we don’t know, we resolve not to pretend to know.
It was pertinent because we were just launching a new facility on the Sea Kayak Wales news page to allow our members to ask questions of the sea kayaking community. We were aware that for some people asking a question is hard – in some fields and circumstances it is hard to let others know that you don’t know something.
We know from having run a support forum for a product dedicated to a specific field of knowledge that many professional practitioners (in that meadow at least) are reluctant to reveal any chinks in their armour. They would avoid asking questions in a public arena and always try and elicit a private response.
These experts were very reluctant to ask their peers for help – although (we divined) they were collectively grateful when we published an anonymised answer for all. This always felt strange – we thought not knowing everything was the normal.
I have an almost endless list of things I don’t know. I enjoy finding out though – and then in many instances promptly forgetting the answers again. Modern technology allows the comfort of just having to remember where you can find a given answer - not the detail of the answers themselves. You might be amazed at the trivial data I just can’t be bothered to commit to memory.
More importantly though – any software developer is very aware that it is impossible to accumulate expertise on everything – in any case “everything” grows at what feels like an exponential rate. People who work with technology (and software in particular) get used to not knowing the answers.
Some Internet Question and Answer sites are of a questionable value – indeed many are simply designed to flood the search engines and to catch up the unwary into a flood of advertising (and worse) – they truly “don’t know”. Others are supported by a community of users who are happy to share their ideas in the knowledge that others will help them in turn.
We aim to make the Sea Kayak Wales site just such a resource – not just for Welsh coastal trips but for every aspect of sea kayaking anywhere. We hope that Sea Kayak Wales (well the site users) will know and will be happy to answer your questions – beginner or expert without prejudice.
We also hope that questions that have no answer are identified by the community as such – we can debate them, perhaps decide on some effective strategy – but if we don’t know, we resolve not to pretend to know.
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