In the question When are dataviz ducks acceptable? I introduce a concept "duck" without explaining what it is, and only provide a link. I did that mostly because when I thought about how to explain it, I realized I would need to embed many figures to illustrate. That judgement came from the fact that when I first listened to its definition, I was completely clueless, and after a couple of illustrations and explanations I could grasp it. So I think in order to make the question self-contained, I will need a dedicate section to explain it. This will make the question much longer. Not only that, I thought that reading my writing is not as efficient as watching the lecture. I then decided that:
- If you have already known what it means, you don't need my explanation anyway. I can skip to the main point quickly
- If you don't know and want to learn it, you can afford a click on the link, and that's more worthy than reading my explanation
- If you don't understand it and the question doesn't intrigue your willingness to click on the link, then you won't feel like leaving a comment or answer is time-worthy anyway
To think in another way, if you think that questions must be self-contained, does that mean you rather having a lengthy question to explain the concepts than a question that get to the main point quickly? In general, I guess that it's fine to skip definitions for basic concepts, but for low frequent terms, this still holds.
Am I missing something?
(To be completely honest, the remaining reason for not explaining is because... I'm lazy. I do feel guilty about that. But this is not the main reason.)