There are questions that should be answered with a counter-question.
"Is that so?"
People give Zen-style answers sometimes (e.g. here).
People might want to answer using Zen-like questions too.
"Can you show that to me?"
I guess that (discussion, rhetorical questions, the Socratic method) is not how we use this site (and not the purpose for which the site was "designed" to be used).
See also this meta-topic: Answers vs Advice -- the consensus then might have been that:
- People who are asking for an answer want an answer
- If they want advice instead of an answer, they can ask for advice
- You can sometimes give advice after you answer, but maybe not instead of answering.
The site isn't meant for back-and-forth discourse/discussion/dialog.
The Kalama sutta for example is a long sequence of questions and answers. If back-and-forth dialog weren't allowed then it would have had to stop almost at the beginning, at the first counter-question, i.e.,
"What do you think, Kalamas? When greed arises in a person, does it arise for welfare or for harm?"
Maybe the Kalamas would "get it" immediately from that first counter-question, but we're meant to assume that if someone is asking some question it's because they don't know how to answer it, and want some explanation and not only a counter-question.
See also Answers I don't understand and/or answers that are questions/riddles/koans -- they're not necessarily seen as helpful.
Consider this question, Do thoughts 'create' vedana? I read it as a basic question, which it has various more-or-less informative answers and references. Conversely, this chat might have been an attempt to answer the question with a counter-question, and that apparently had a relatively unsuccessful outcome.
Another thing to consider is that there are two audiences for every question:
- The OP who asked the question
- Everyone else who reads the answers
A theory is that someone in the future might use Google to search for 'vedana', find that page and want to read the answers ... and that they want to read relatively impersonal or universally-true answers, instead of counter-questions and one-on-one dialog.
Speaking of counter-questions, you can post a comment if you don't understand the question; e.g. you can post a comment to say,
- "I don't understand that question, because..."
- "Do you mean...?"
- "Where did you read that...?"
- "Different schools of Buddhism might different answers to that question. Are you asking for an answer from the point of view of a specific school?"
See also this site's Moderation policies for Questions -- i.e. on this site people try to answer questions even if the question is unclear.
You can try to clarify what the question is, but you probably shouldn't expect to get the OP to answer their own question as a result of your asking counter-questions.
just on one kind of question of the four-- Are you saying there are four kinds of question? Would you summarize or list, what are "the four" which you're asking about here?