You'd think, but in an online forum it doesn't work that way. For an example of this, see below for my intentionally contentious comment "questions aren't a co

You'd think, but in an online forum it doesn't work that way. For an example of this, see below for my intentionally contentious comment "questions aren't a contribution". It evoked some high voted comments, and yet the comment itself has been down-voted as having "no value". The irony of this is that it kind of proves my contention in the first place. The value of a comment is more about the response it generates than the comment itself. As you say, an ignorant student may start a worthwhile discussion, but it doesn't make the student (or their question) any less ignorant. My comment was rightfully down-voted for not contributing value to the discussion, even though the comments that stemmed from it do. The OP contends that if a question generates a vigorous discussion, then it must have it's own intrinsic value....which clearly is not the case. If it did, my worthless comment would have the sum value of it's child comments and therefore be the top rated comment of the thread. Quite the paradox. Every comment is (and should be) treated on its merits. A question with interesting answers doesn't mean the question itself was interesting or worthy of praise. "Why is the sky blue?", "Why do stars sparkle?", "What makes a rainbow" are all pretty dull kiddy questions, but they all have interesting answers.