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My whole measure isn't necessarily about "effort". My measure of whether or not a question is good stems from the idea of building a repository of high quality information.

Effectively, when I look at a question, I ask myself 4 things:

• Is the problem clear and well described?
• Is the problem focused and reasonably scoped?
• Is this an issue that someone else will have, and will be helped by potential answers to the question?
• And related to the above, will someone who has the same problem, be able to find the question via a search engine?

If the question meets all for items (and is on-topic), then there shouldn't be a reason to close it because someone didn't put in enough "effort". We are not teachers, and we aren't grading homework. As such, I have always been annoyed by the whole "show your work" mantra of other SE sites. The reason the mantra exists is to force askers to provide enough information to answer the question, not to be used as a reason to close questions.

The first question, Is it possible to "pump" a powder?, suffers from the fact that the body does not contain the question. They ask the question in the title, then follow up with additional information in the body. The question body should be self contained (which should not include the title). But if that were fixed, the question seems reasonable and would appear to fit the 4 bullets above.

The second question, http://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5/gyroscopic-couple-on-a-car-taking-a-turn, seems too broad to me. Without anything to limit the question, you are talking about novels to answer the question.

My whole measure isn't necessarily about "effort". My measure of whether or not a question is good stems from the idea of building a repository of high quality information.

Effectively, when I look at a question, I ask myself 4 things:

• Is the problem clear and well described?
• Is the problem focused and reasonably scoped?
• Is this an issue that someone else will have, and will be helped by potential answers to the question?
• And related to the above, will someone who has the same problem, be able to find the question via a search engine?

If the question meets all for items (and is on-topic), then there shouldn't be a reason to close it because someone didn't put in enough "effort". We are not teachers, and we aren't grading homework. As such, I have always been annoyed by the whole "show your work" mantra of other SE sites. The reason the mantra exists is to force askers to provide enough information to answer the question, not to be used as a reason to close questions.

The first question, Is it possible to "pump" a powder?, suffers from the fact that the body does not contain the question. They ask the question in the title, then follow up with additional information in the body. The question body should be self contained (which should not include the title). But if that were fixed, the question seems reasonable and would appear to fit the 4 bullets above.

The second question, https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5/gyroscopic-couple-on-a-car-taking-a-turn, seems too broad to me. Without anything to limit the question, you are talking about novels to answer the question.

My whole measure isn't necessarily about "effort". My measure of whether or not a question is good stems from the idea of building a repository of high quality information.

Effectively, when I look at a question, I ask myself 4 things:

• Is the problem clear and well described?
• Is the problem focused and reasonably scoped?
• Is this an issue that someone else will have, and will be helped by potential answers to the question?
• And related to the above, will someone who has the same problem, be able to find the question via a search engine?

If the question meets all for items (and is on-topic), then there shouldn't be a reason to close it because someone didn't put in enough "effort". We are not teachers, and we aren't grading homework. As such, I have always been annoyed by the whole "show your work" mantra of other SE sites. The reason the mantra exists is to force askers to provide enough information to answer the question, not to be used as a reason to close questions.

The first question, Is it possible to "pump" a powder?, suffers from the fact that the body does not contain the question. They ask the question in the title, then follow up with additional information in the body. The question body should be self contained (which includes the title). But if that were fixed, the question seems reasonable and would appear to fit the 4 bullets above.

The second question, http://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5/gyroscopic-couple-on-a-car-taking-a-turn, seems too broad to me. Without anything to limit the question, you are talking about novels to answer the question.

My whole measure isn't necessarily about "effort". My measure of whether or not a question is good stems from the idea of building a repository of high quality information.

Effectively, when I look at a question, I ask myself 4 things:

• Is the problem clear and well described?
• Is the problem focused and reasonably scoped?
• Is this an issue that someone else will have, and will be helped by potential answers to the question?
• And related to the above, will someone who has the same problem, be able to find the question via a search engine?

If the question meets all for items (and is on-topic), then there shouldn't be a reason to close it because someone didn't put in enough "effort". We are not teachers, and we aren't grading homework. As such, I have always been annoyed by the whole "show your work" mantra of other SE sites. The reason the mantra exists is to force askers to provide enough information to answer the question, not to be used as a reason to close questions.

The first question, Is it possible to "pump" a powder?, suffers from the fact that the body does not contain the question. They ask the question in the title, then follow up with additional information in the body. The question body should be self contained (which should not include the title). But if that were fixed, the question seems reasonable and would appear to fit the 4 bullets above.

The second question, http://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5/gyroscopic-couple-on-a-car-taking-a-turn, seems too broad to me. Without anything to limit the question, you are talking about novels to answer the question.

My whole measure isn't necessarily about "effort". My measure of whether or not a question is good effort stems from the idea of building a repository of high quality information.

Effectively, when I look at a question, I ask myself 4 things:

• Is the problem clear and well described?
• Is the problem focused and reasonably scoped?
• Is this an issue that someone else will have, and will be helped by potential answers to the question?
• And related to the above, will someone who has the same problem, be able to find the question via a search engine?

If the question meets all for items (and is on-topic), then there shouldn't be a reason to close it because someone didn't put in enough "effort". We are not teachers, and we aren't grading homework. As such, I have always been annoyed by the whole "show your work" mantra of other SE sites. The reason the mantra exists is to force askers to provide enough information to answer the question, not to be used as a reason to close questions.

The first question, Is it possible to "pump" a powder?, suffers from the fact that the body does not contain the question. They ask the question in the title, then follow up with additional information in the body. The question body should be self contained (which includes the title). But if that were fixed, the question seems reasonable and would appear to fit the 4 bullets above.

The second question, http://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5/gyroscopic-couple-on-a-car-taking-a-turn, seems too broad to me. Without anything to limit the question, you are talking about novels to answer the question.

My whole measure isn't necessarily about "effort". My measure of whether or not a question is good stems from the idea of building a repository of high quality information.

Effectively, when I look at a question, I ask myself 4 things:

• Is the problem clear and well described?
• Is the problem focused and reasonably scoped?
• Is this an issue that someone else will have, and will be helped by potential answers to the question?
• And related to the above, will someone who has the same problem, be able to find the question via a search engine?

If the question meets all for items (and is on-topic), then there shouldn't be a reason to close it because someone didn't put in enough "effort". We are not teachers, and we aren't grading homework. As such, I have always been annoyed by the whole "show your work" mantra of other SE sites. The reason the mantra exists is to force askers to provide enough information to answer the question, not to be used as a reason to close questions.

The first question, Is it possible to "pump" a powder?, suffers from the fact that the body does not contain the question. They ask the question in the title, then follow up with additional information in the body. The question body should be self contained (which includes the title). But if that were fixed, the question seems reasonable and would appear to fit the 4 bullets above.

The second question, http://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5/gyroscopic-couple-on-a-car-taking-a-turn, seems too broad to me. Without anything to limit the question, you are talking about novels to answer the question.