Screening

Overview

Screening is the process of sorting through a large number of items based on certain criteria. It's a concept used in many fields: in medicine, finding diseases early through health checkups; in hiring, narrowing down candidates through document reviews; in security, detecting suspicious access.

In the context of a question box, screening is the process of choosing which of the questions you received to answer and setting aside the ones to let pass. As the number of questions grows, efficient screening can become the key to running your box.

Criteria for screening questions

When screening questions, it's important to have clear criteria. Without criteria, your decisions may swing with your mood that day. Here are some example criteria.

Questions to remove right away: prying for personal information, abuse, spam, and copy-paste questions. These are easy to spot without reading them closely. One approach is to judge them mechanically by keywords and writing style.

Questions to consider answering: questions that are hard to answer but make you think, questions that go a little deeper, and questions with a unique angle. These are worth holding for a while and deciding on after some time has passed.

Questions to answer first: questions many of your followers are likely to relate to, questions where you can use your expertise, and questions that make the community's mood better.

Automating screening and its limits

Banned-word filters and spam filters offered by platforms automate part of screening. But automatic screening has limits. A system that relies only on matching words has a hard time telling a joke from something serious. Malicious questions written in polite language can also slip past filters.

In the final round of screening, there's still a role for human judgment. To lighten the load of that judgment, it helps to decide on your own rules in advance, such as "I never answer questions about X" or "I decide on questions that arrive late at night the next morning." Rules set in advance cut the work of deciding from scratch every time and are one factor in lowering the mental cost of screening.