Astronomy FAQs got ya down?

Question

Like many regulars in A&S, I'm sick and tired of "the FAQs" that just won't die - they spring up like imps prodding us with pitchforks... nobody bothers to see if it's been asked before, the regular littanies of increasingly-irritated replies from the NO! crowd, and the tireless YES people saying that the government lied, that Nibiru will kill us all, that Area 51 is the Earth's spaceport, etc..... And the cycle of life continues.

Wanna have a little fun with it? From this day forward, I am going to simply keep an odometer, and respond to the question as follows:

FAQ Odometer updated

2012: #

Apollo Hoax: #

(my personal two train wreck FAQs that I just can't seem to resist getting sucked back into)

Who's with me?

Answer 1

Sure - I'm up for that...

You need to add "Why is the sky blue?" - although i think it occurs more in Earth Science and Geology. Some days I answer it 4 times in a day... I think it's been asked somewhere close to 10,000 times.I know its not as annoying as the hoax/doomsday questions - but it does annoy me that people don;t look t see whter it has been asked...

Then there's the recently accelerated interest in Apophis (why it has come up now is beyond me)

And we get spasmodic interest in the LHC (although I guess that one will die once they switch it on and don't destroy the earth)

If I get bored I'll go back through my answers and make a count...

Answer 2

I'm definitely with you. It's INCREDIBLY annoying to find the same questions over and over again. As I said in response to your other question, the only way to combat them is to report them as spam. Clearly, there must be enough of us who are scientifically minded and who think these 2012/Moon hoax questions are posted by gullible, silly people (at best). Don't keep answering these idiots over and over again, as if they will take it on board! Report them and be done with it.

Answer 3

I'm with you, but i have to say sometimes i ask some pretty dumb questions myself, most of the time out of sleep deprivation, i do get annoyed with the constant 2012, Planet X/Nibiru, Moon Landing Hoax, LCH, questions but at the same time i have gotten a number of best answers from them as well, i think Yahoo should filter out questions that have been answered like 1000 times before, but then again maybe Yahoo should automatically send the end of the world questions to the Religion & Spirituality category, after all last time i checked death & dying are related to spirituality.

Answer 4

Finally, someone with a brain asks a question! YES! I LIKE THAT IDEA! I will be doing that from now on... lets see, I've answered one moon landing question... no.... wait..... 2 today. I skip a lot of the 2012 questions because I don't have my copy-paste answer with me, but I'll count them as asked questions. Nice idea... maybe we should include the LHC too. There were a lot of questions about that. But it seems to have died down by now, so lets stick to apollo and 2012. And yes, I'm tired of ignorant fools. Perhaps government conspiracies in general... apparently, Nibiru is a government conspiracy too. But hey, lets start off simple. Nice idea... I'm with you!

Answer 5

If that is your thing, go for it.

Myself, if the one asking is really obnoxious, I like to pull them in with a mismatch of other conspiracies, like Elvis did it after he shot JFK on hypnotic suggestion of Marylin Monroe, or something like that.

As for the lunar landing hoax, we now have the Mythbuster episode to quote, and if someone is not capable of accepting it as evidence, then I will suggest they sign their organ donor card because this is their only hope of positively contributing to society, or something like that.

Answer 6

Im with you! ITS SO ANNOYING!!!! They are the stupidest questions and no matter how many times they are answered, the same group keeps popping up time after time with "new evidence" which is in fact a different spin on the same old questions.

The worst bit is when that crowd feels threatened, and sends you hatemail in the form of any abuse they can throw at you...ah well, at least those things keep them occupied, imagine if they got their minds around a real problem?

Answer 7

Go for it zero. I've had my share of one way communications to the yahoos about this. The purpose of y/a seems to have a more sinister side to it than simply the exchange of information.

It is, and always has been y/a goal to flood the search engines. This has proven to be a successful self-serving strategy ploy. It is now quite common to search or google a topic and see yahooanswers in the top 10 of the search engine.

Unfortunately, as you already know, the majority of y/a carries no weight when it comes to delivering valid and meaningful information for the googler.

How many times does a question go up for voting and the BA is chosen with 1 or 2 votes? How many times will some crazy idiot choose an even crazier answer on the grounds that it supports the questioner's opinion of a subject yet an intelligent person knows that the answer is not correct by any means whatsoever?

Who the h**l wants THAT kind of shitt on the top 10 of a search engine? Not anyone who seeks to keep SOME kind of integrity in the www.

But that is not the concern of the yahoos. Every time a y/a gets nudged into the top 10 of a search engine, yahoo profits by getting yahoo exposure. It doesn't matter how brilliant or how utterly bogus the question or the answer. Yahoo wins.

I've pointed this problem out to the yahoos since 2012 hit the 8,000 mark. Now, it's past 12,000.

You will find through experience that the yahoos don't give a rat's asss about FAQs or even trying to get them posted in proper categories. All complaints and polite constructive suggestions to alter or to improve what COULD be a good system only fall upon deaf ears and blind eyes.

I see no harm in your tactic. Been there done that. And since there will NEVER be a FAQ button for us to hit, and the garbage pile of similar questions grows and grows, soon (if not yesterday) the search for similar question bar will itself serve no useful purpose.

Who in their right mind is going to dig through 13,000 similar questions to find their lost needle in the haystack? I wouldn't. I've had the fun experience of chiding a questioner for posting a FAQ and she actually had the gall to chew me out! She said she knew 2012 had been asked before but she wanted HER question answered.

The leaking water pipe SHOULD have been repaired long ago. Now there's 10 feet of water and the yahoos are swimming. Not in water but in cash. The exposure given to yahoo by infiltrating search engines is well worth leaving the system broken.

In the future, generations will skip over y/a results in search engines faster than you can delete spam from your email. It will by then be recognized for what it is...unreliable and useless garbage.

So, have your fun. I know that presenting factual and insightful information is your goal. I've seen your answers. But keep in mind that without a FAQ button, even the most brilliant answer of all time will simply be forever lost to humanity. I might enjoy your answers that shine like a diamond. But I'm sure the h**l not going to dig through a manure pit to try to find them.

Answer 8

Say what?

Answer 9

2012 questions are more frequent than Apollo hoax questions, let the idiots think what they want to think, morons are popping up everywhere around the Earth, so instead of fighting it, I'm just gonna live with it.