withdrawal, it does not help the person seeking an answer. I would rather make a decision and have another generation of writers of responsa take a different path, than make no decision.
Some Practical Issues
There are a number of practical difficulties facing anyone who writes responsa. The first is the size of the literature and its state of disorganization. Most of the volumes of past centuries have no index or entries which are not helpful. That has been partially changed through the computerized responsa project undertaken in Israel which did not exist thirty years ago. A vast literature, along with its commentaries still lies outside the scope of the responsa project as does the secondary literature of books and periodicals, some of which are obscure.
The changing style of responsa writing that has developed through the ages brings its problems. During some periods responsa were direct and brief, though rarely as brief as some of Maimonides single-word replies. At other times the authors sought to display their erudition and cited every precedent along with their comments upon it. Another set of authors wished to create hidushin and traveled down numerous byroads to do so. It was necessary to sort out what was useful without neglecting the peripheral.
Questions come in every area of Jewish law and occasionally in rather obscure corners. Some issues that are of great significance to us were of little interest or peripheral in earlier ages, so responses had to be sought from analogous situations. The search in that direction can consume a huge amount of time and often with little to show for it. On the other hand, some issues loomed large in earlier periods and resulted in an enormous amount of literature that must be studied, although there is rarely time to master it. Some of the long— standing controversies that raged for a century in the traditional community have been of little interest to us.