Should we try to create Storybuilding.SE?

Question

Turns out, this has been asked before or, more accurately, someone tried to create such a site (even the effort has been deleted from Area 51) and it failed. So...

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Worldbuilding.SE legend has it that the idea of Storybuilding.SE was once discussed, but at the time the rules of Stack Exchange were so rigid that such a Stack could never succeed or even graduate from Area 51.

Time has passed. It's been proven that people completely ignore rules and that few people are really interested in enforcing them. Further, Stack Exchange appears to be relaxing its belief that every answer should have the immutable objectivity of solving a mathematics problem. Indeed, since Stack Exchange seems to care very little if we're following any of its rules at all (interventions in the last 5 years have been so rare that I can remember only one), there may be some wiggle room.

And if this Stack has proven anything at all, it's that people have as much fun (or, frankly, even more fun) answering storybuilding questions than they do worldbuilding questions.

Question: Is it time to try and create Storybuilding.SE over at Area 51?

NOTE: Do NOT run over to Area 51 and create Storybuilding.SE. It's a LOT more complicated than that! We'll be required to establish the rules of behavior for that Stack and that deserves more thought than just ringing the proverbial bell. A minimum number of interested participants are required, and if we don't see a lot of support here, it's a waste of time (might even be a negative, setting a precedent) to try to create the Stack. On the other hand, it would be helpful for people interested in this process to visit Area 51 and familiarize themselves with how that service works. And remember, the only people who decide if a Stack graduates Area 51 is Stack Exchange staff.

Issues:

• Storybuilding.SE (SB.SE) will be stuck with the same Help Center problems that Worldbuilding (WB.SE) suffers and then some. This means that Storybuilding.SE's creation must include, from the outset, policy-based rule overrides. SE allows communities to override rules, but they don't like it and want to see it minimized.

• If SB.SE were created today, there would be an enormous blur between SB.SE and WB.SE. That's a very real problem as it would be best if the two sites conscientiously migrated questions to the appropriate Stack. I wouldn't be surprised if our Stack Exchange Overlords expected us to clearly differentiate between the two Stacks.

• Stack Exchange does not want to be perceived as another Reddit or Quora. That means establishing real and practical rules for excluding questions. If the Area 51 participants can't explain what questions are off-topic, SB.SE will likely not be allowed to graduate Area 51.

• There is no guarantee that Stack Exchange will allow SB.SE to graduate Area 51. It would be the most subjective Stack they have. It might be the most subjective Stack they ever have.

Finally, it's worth noting that an astute observer might ask, "why don't we just broaden ourselves here at WB.SE so we can answer story-based questions?" There's still a LOT of resistance to story-based questions here. Therefore, I don't believe it's worth even trying to open the doors to storybuilding questions on this Stack. Besides, I can see a clear difference between the question goals, so I believe there's value to having two sites.

Answer 1

No

The SB.SE as described will be just creative writing prompts. While people can have fun with that*, I do not think it has value for the SE network.

I do not think SE has to house everything. It can leave topics for other sites.

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*I certainly personally do like them.

Answer 2

NO

I can foresee that a StoryBuilding SE could have issues with accusations of plagiarism. How could members of such a site avoid being asked to review/write/plot students' homework questions? It would be all very well to say in the help pages that homework questions shouldn't be asked, but how can we tell such questions from non-homework questions? If a student relied upon such answers, that could lead them to accusations of plagiarism even considering that the answers would be in the public domain, since students are required to submit their own work.

Secondly, where is the objectivity? Wouldn't the value of the questions and answers come down to a subjective assessment of how interesting they are to the user reading them? People's tastes differ, and users who wouldn't usually read or like a story of a particular genre may still read and vote on a question or answer of that genre, and hence skew the voting score. If enough users did this, it might become simply a matter of how many users like or dislike the particular genre.

Finally, I don't believe that the art of story-telling should be reduced to running to a Q&A site whenever the writer gets stuck for ideas. I use WB SE to get answers to questions on topics that I'm not an expert on, but my stories' plots are entirely my own. If I relied on a StoryBuilding SE, I don't think that they would be any more.

Answer 3

The MIDDLE WAY

Problems:
I too like questions about story building. Good ones anyway! I believe Monty has a valid point as far as objectivity goes. While writing and storycraft do have rules and conventions and loads of 'wisdom of the ages' that can help craft a good story, I agree that there are loads of ways to craft a good story! Objectivity would be possible on SB.SE, but still far from Stack Exchange's ideal. They suffer our existence, but if they caught wind of us being behind the creation of yet another almost entirely subjective, entirely opinion based forum, I think they'd nix it.

Monty also mentions plagiarism. In my opinion, I'm not convinced that it would be a huge issue. No worse, anyway, than what might occur here in WB. It's still a valid consideration, and since I daresay SB.SE would largely be owned and operated by us, it just means we'd have two forums in which to herd cats.

VLAZ makes a good point about SB.SE becoming a clearing house for writing prompts. This would be a far worse problem than subjectivity.

Solution:
I agree with JBH that one could construe a lack of storybuilding resources on Stack Exchange, and thus such a forum might be seen as useful. However, I don't think its utility counts for enough to make a whole new forum.

If WB's question load were 50% story related questions, then perhaps it would make sense to create the forum. Story questions, while frequent, just aren't that common. So for me, a new forum would be a somewhat squishy no.

However, there is a way we can have our cake and eat it too, and that is quite simple. We, the undersigned, the VTC Brigade, the people whose voices are most likely to be heard here in Meta, the people who are regularly the most active in Main, simply have to relax our hardline stance on GOOD storybuilding questions.

We could very easily have a conversation about what constitutes "good storybuilding queries" and what constitutes trash. If we can come up with a small number of good question categories, we could simply look the other way when such queries appear.

I've been doing exactly this for years when it comes to "opinion based" questions, and I am more than amenable to do the same for good story based questions!

I think I'll give that a try!

Answer 4

A Response from Stack Exchange Staff

While deciding whether or not to continue advocating for this idea, I decided to ask the opinion of SE staff. Here's what I wrote:

30 Jan 2023

In reference to Should we try to create Storybuilding.SE?. I am the user who posted the question.

It's probably time that we officially heard from a Stack Exchange employee concerning the viability of petitioning at Area 51 a sister site to Worldbuilding: Storybuilding. It appears that an increasing number of subjective sites are appearing (e.g., Academia, Code Review, Community Building, Expatriates, Freelancing, Interpersonal Skills, Workplace, and others) wherein answers are less objective and more opinion-based. Answers are based on experience, wisdom, and even creativity vs. qualitative and quantitative best practices. And querents are asking questions that are almost always relevant only to themselves and their project/issue (i.e., the question almost never serves to help a significant number of people in the future).

Why am I asking? Because story-based (storybuilding) questions are by far and away the most popular questions on Worldbuilding. People who try to police the rules (yes, like me) are unpopular because people don't want interference with what they're doing.

And, as fate would have it, what they're doing is writing stories more often than strictly building worlds.

Thus, I ask if Stack Exchange today would arbitrarily prohibit a pitch for storybuilding simply because it still sees itself (as it did a decade ago) as a strictly objective site expecting questions that lead to answers that can help a potentially large group of people? I'm neither for nor against, but if SE's goals still preclude a Stack as subjective as Storybuilding would be, then I can report that and discontinue the meta discussion. But, if you're willing to hear the proverbial pitch and believe SE can embrace that level of subjectivity, then I'll continue to seek support.

Here is SE's response:

Hey JBH,

I'm Slate, a Community Manager at Stack Exchange. In general, we're willing to help see sites through the Area 51 process as best we can. There's no strict requirement for sites to have singular objective answers; however, questions need to be answerable in such a way that answers can be meaningfully weighed in comparison to each other on their merits. For example, I strongly suspect such a site could not reasonably be a place for writing prompts, where the answers respond to the writing prompt. Similarly, questions need to be able to be weighed according to quality standards that the site sets out, and I foresee some potential challenges for a Storybuilding site in defining what a good question can or should look like.

However, I do need to caution that, with the existence of Worldbuilding, Writers, Freelancing, and Literature, the topic of story development is already quite thoroughly covered by existing ground. If you do want to initiate such a proposal, I would strongly encourage you to take good care to differentiate its scope clearly from the existing sites on the network.

At the end of the day, we gauge each Area 51 proposal on its own merits, both in terms of the quality of content it's likely to produce, and how clearly it differentiates its use case from other sites on the network. To a certain extent, I suspect we won't be able to give you a definitive answer as to whether Storybuilding could succeed until we have a concrete proposal to evaluate. Please let me know if you've got any questions I can help with.

Thanks, Slate

The bold statement says that between four Stacks (Worldbuilding, Writing, Freelancing, and Literature) the ability to ask storybuilding questions exists. I disagree:

• Worldbuilding states in its Help Center, "When asking questions keep in mind that the goal of the site is to help you build your world, not to tell your story." Storybuilding is not allowed.

• While Writing states in its Help Center that questions about fiction are on-topic, "Questions asking what to write about." are off-topic. They continue, "We're looking to avoid questions where the intent is to generate ideas." Storybuilding is not allowed.

• Literature states in its help center that "Questions about creating literature yourself" are off-topic. Storybuilding is not allowed.

• The outlier is Freelancing. I've asked on that Stack if they'd accept storybuilding questions. I doubt they will. Their Help Center doesn't specifically exclude storybuilding, but everything about what they do accept is focused on the profession of freelancing, not what to write as a freelancer. Their Tour has an example question that's 100% storybuilding, but the tour concludes by excluding opinion-based questions (which might be a Stack Exchange template requirement). I'll update this post with their response.

In conclusion, I disagree with Stack Exchange's staff that storybuilding is already accommodated somewhere on Stack Exchange — unless you assume that our regularly-ignored rules against storybuilding questions constitutes a solution.

Answer 5

Yes. Good idea!

And no need to go to Area 51. This new stack will be the old stack called Worldbuilding Stack. Worldbuilding Stack will let down its hair and open its arms. The emphasis on black and white may continue on other stack sites but WB will be black, white, shades of gray and also the color of that dress that is gold and also blue. Also there may be UV colors that only cell phones can see. The old will be good. The new will now also be good! Votes to close will be reserved for the brutally terse, unanswerably broad or the plain incomprehensible. On the new WB stack the good the bad and the ugly will link arms and do high kicks, Rockette style! It will be the WB Stack that WB Stack strives to be! Has striven to be? Strove? A little help with that please.

In any case, persons who find their undies in a bundle about the agape love newly to be found on WB Stack thanks to JBH will be invited to update their wardrobe for the new age or relocate to the Mathematics stack.

Answer 6

I like working on storytelling but not in this sort of format. I see the gap, all the time, but I don't see that we can fill it. Storybuilding, as opposed to worldbuilding, will have to be about plot, believability of scenarios etc..., because that's what the WB and Writing Stacks won't touch. That leaves answers as either a matter of opinion from the responder and/or their value as a matter of opinion from the OP. No easy objective metrics exist in this territory, we might create such metrics but those will inevitably exclude questions, many of them that we'd really love to answer.

Don't get me wrong, if it can be made to work I'm there, I just don't see how it can be made to work well and fairly in any capacity.

I also feel there are issues with electronically transmitted communications (in particular tone is often opaque) that are bad enough with the relatively impersonal issues we deal with in WB. Dealing with something as personal as someone's writing I can see things getting rapidly and horribly acrimonious.