A pants problem
I had a pants problem, and I turned to the Internet for advice.
And then I turned my pants problem into a practical comparison of some of the different ways to get answers to tricky life questions from the Internet.
A short summary of my problem:
I'm really picky about pants, and having trouble finding pants I like. I'm tired of super-expensive jeans, and khakis and most dressy pants I see are boring.
Does anyone have suggestions for pants that I can wear to the office, that look good, aren't totally boring, and are fairly durable? Easy to clean would be nice, but I can handle dry-cleaning.
I'm totally serious about this question.
Questions and answers
I posted that to Quora, which was the service which got me thinking about question and answer services. (That and my desperate need for better pants.) Quora seemed intriguing, and I keep getting invites from other people, but the questions seemed pretty … limited in scope. It's all very Silicon Valley inward-facing with lots of thinky questions about design process and The State of The Industry and etc. All the questions I came up with on that front seemed pretty artificial, and I wondered how they'd handle a more down-to-earth subject.
Similarly, with Aardvark, I'd done a bunch of answering questions (usually about restaurants in San Francisco, a perennial favorite), and enjoyed the experience, but had never tried asking something myself.
So I decided to use my pants problem to put them to the test.