How can we steer "how do I do this?" questions to be more descriptive and more generally useful?

Question

So, we've got a lot of questions like:

• How has the photographer made the subject stand out in this shot?
• How do I take a shot like the flooded tree by Andrew Tallon?
• What settings do I need to take a night cityscape with blue sky like Eric Rolph?
• What techniques has Jennifer Tibbetts used to make her photos "pop"?
• How was this black and white photograph of a calm ocean done?
• How do I achieve the coloring similar to photos by Tonhya Kae?

These aren't awful, and they're generally moderately-well voted up and answered.

One problem is that they're not searchable, at least not with the current state-of-the-art in web search. I (and other people) have tried to edit the question titles to be more descriptive than they often come in, but even still, I question their future usefulness to other visitors.

But more importantly, it's as if Stack Overflow were full of questions like:

I really like this software. Can anyone tell me what techniques are used? I'd like to make something similar. Will an object-oriented technique work? Can I do it with my current programming language? If not, what programming language should I buy?

Questions like How to make transparent liquid on white porcelain visible? are far more valuable and interesting. I want to do this thing, and I tried and got this. What can I do to get better results?

Now, I don't want to tell people curious how something someone else did was done to just go away. But is there some way we can encourage them to try first and then post their own examples? If we had a question like that every day, that (plus good answers, of course) would all by itself by an awesome site, let alone everything else we do.

Answer 1

I think you have the right idea, but the wrong suggestions.

"Questions like How to make transparent liquid on white porcelain visible? are far more valuable and interesting. I want to do this thing, and I tried and got this. What can I do to get better results?"

That's a great question, not because we know what the person already tried, but because it's very specific, and not so limited that it won't be useful to anyone else.

To be frank, I don't care what you already tried, because the next person that comes along is not going to have done the same thing. Showing an example of what you already tried is definitely a good idea so we know exactly what you're talking about, but the question shouldn't be about that.

Pulling some question titles from the top-voted here at photo.SE:

• What are the best techniques for photographing overweight people?
• How do you photograph rain? / How should I photograph falling snow?
• How do you photograph a lunar eclipse?

These are great questions because they invite general answers that can apply to anyone, not just a person who took a photo one time. That's not to say that specific answers containing a specific picture and the steps to create it shouldn't be welcome - those are valuable too. But as far as being a general Q&A site, we should be looking for answers to be useful long after the asker read them.

So for example, these questions:

• How was this black and white photograph of a calm ocean done?
• How do I take a shot like the flooded tree by Andrew Tallon?

are very similar; I'd say a question like "How can I get a completely smooth ocean and sky?", with these shown as samples would be pretty good.

Referring to your fake SO example, that's certainly bad because it's way too vague. Saying what you like, getting more specific could make that a good question. But at the opposite end of the spectrum is questions like "Why doesn't this code I wrote work?". Questions like that often get an answer in 2 minutes saying "You put this line in the wrong place" or "You forgot a bracket here". And that could be the absolute 100% correct answer. But those kinds of questions and answers are really not useful in the long term.

Answer 2

I think it's worth noting that in some cases, works by a particular artist have a very distinctive - and ineffable - aesthetic.

To make an analogy, in musical works it's common for new artists to be described based on what well-known artists they sound similar to. Anyone who ever does an a capella song modified by a vocoder will invoke constant comparisons to Imogen Heap's unique hit track "Hide and Seek" which doesn't sound like anything else. On a music StackExchange, it would make sense to have a question like, "How can I reproduce the effect used in Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek"?"

Likewise, many photographic aesthetics that are difficult to describe are permanently associated in the minds of critics and fans with particular artists, and questions about how to reproduce their style are actually probably more searchable than similar queries using a vague description of the sought-after effect.