#156 How to Write a Question of the Week
April 12, 2010Dr Craig,
How many questions do you get a week? How many of those do you usually hold on to in hopes of answering them in the future? Do you read them all or does a team read them and pass along the good ones? How much gets to you? Is it at the point where only the top 1% of Q's end up getting chosen? What can people do to increase their chances?
Blake
United States
Dr. craig’s response
A
This week I received over 50 questions to choose from. Of these I’ll hold on to two or three in case a good question doesn’t come in during some future week. Up to this point, I’ve been able to read all the questions personally, which I’ve really enjoyed. Many are tremendously encouraging, some of which we’ll post under the Testimonials section of the website. It’s thrilling for me to see the impact Reasonable Faith is having all around the world. With the increasing volume, however, I fear that as a good steward of my time, I’m soon going to have to have someone screen the questions for me so that I read only the most important. In any case, I guess we’re not to the 1% ratio yet but less than 2% (one out of 50 chosen).
The reason I took your question, Blake, is your final question. Not in order to increase people’s chances of having their question picked, but in order to improve the overall quality of the questions and maybe even deter some well-intended folks from sending in questions that are--how shall I put it?--of questionable merit! So with that objective in mind I want to provide the following guidelines for writing a good Question of the Week.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK GUIDELINES
1. Questions which are of interest to a wide range of readers are given preference. Esoteric questions may be of great interest to the submitter but are unlikely to be chosen as the Question of the Week.
2. Questions which show some knowledge of and which interact with my own work are preferred. Questions which I have already addressed in my published work or in the articles posted on this site are of little interest. So check these resources first, particularly the Question of the Week Archive, before submitting your question.
3. Questions should be self-contained. Do not send a link to some youtube video or published article and ask, “What is your reaction to this?”
4. Questions should focus on a single issue. Do not ask multiple, unrelated questions.
5. Questions should be genuine questions. Please do not submit your views on some issue, e.g., the problem of evil, and ask, “What do you think of this?”
6. Questions from overseas, especially from readers in predominantly non-Christian countries, are especially welcome.
7. Questions about Young vs. Old Earth Creationism will not be addressed.
8. Run spell-check before submitting your question!
- William Lane Craig