Timeline for Considered harmful: questions where the asker expects us to figure out a scientific explanation or alternative for their handwavium
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
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| Jan 19, 2023 at 8:42 | history | edited | Tortliena - inactive | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Explicitly defined closure reason
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| Jan 11, 2023 at 16:54 | comment | added | sphennings | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| Jan 11, 2023 at 16:48 | comment | added | Tortliena - inactive | @Sphennings But you won't be answering actually the question, as you aren't trying to answer "realistically". In other words, this is a frame-challenge. This is why "how can X realistically be done?" and "Can X realistically exist?" (which hidden intent is usually the first question, btw) only have none or only one answer : "It's impossible with real-world science". None or one depending on what you define as an answer :). | |
| Jan 11, 2023 at 16:44 | comment | added | sphennings | If justifying 100m giant, it's just as valid to say "Don't worry about it. Giants are cool!", "Our best minds have been stumped as to why.", "They are in the favor of the god of unusually big things.", "Cellular antigravity fields", or something convincing about the material properties of their skeleton. These are some of my opinions about how to answer that question. Note how it's both too broad given the number of answers, and POB. | |
| Jan 11, 2023 at 16:37 | comment | added | sphennings | You're misrepresenting the class of questions. OP isn't asking about "Is x realistic?" OP is asking about "How do I justify an unrealistic X?" If something is unrealistic you cannot explain it away into realism without fundamentally changing it. Choosing how to fundamentally change it, or making up a convincing sounding explanation both require a judgement call from the answerer, and permit many equally valid answers. The class of question necessarily meets both the broad and POB definitions. However it's more convenient to say "this has many valid answers" when explaining closure | |
| Jan 11, 2023 at 16:28 | comment | added | Tortliena - inactive | @Sphennings the proposal explicitly asks to close questions for being too broad. We shouldn't let the community and new askers be confused by contradicting elements because "too broad" means this proposal too now and their questions (like "Can my giant be realistically 100m tall?") don't match the general definition of "being too broad" as there's only one answer. This is already hard for people to stay consistent and clear in closures and reopenings, let's not add oil to the fire. | |
| Jan 11, 2023 at 16:23 | comment | added | Tortliena - inactive | @Sphennings But the truth is that questions are not all opinion-based and lacking focus! You should take into account all the Venn's diagram of possibilities! If you think that a question should be closed anyway you're missing at least half of the questions which don't fall in those cases. | |
| Jan 11, 2023 at 16:22 | comment | added | sphennings | We probably should add more granular close reasons for clarity. But that's an unrelated discussion. | |
| Jan 11, 2023 at 16:19 | comment | added | sphennings | The close reason has no impact VTC VTRO process. What value is there in debating which close reason to select on a question that should be closed? There is enough overlap between broad and POB that, most of the time, both reasons will be valid. Each of our close reasons covers a whole slew of issues. For instance Broad covers questions that fail the book test, and questions that have many valid answers. POB also covers questions with many valid answers since determining the right answer is a matter of opinion. | |
| Jan 11, 2023 at 16:04 | comment | added | Tortliena - inactive | @Sphennings I answered the proposal exactly as told, which let's recall, is this : "As such, I posit that by entertaining such questions here we are doing writers a massive disservice, and consequently that we should be doing a far more zealous job of closing them as "too broad" as soon as they're posted.". If we want rigorous closures, we should first think what each closure reason actually mean and when to put them. | |
| Jan 11, 2023 at 15:51 | comment | added | sphennings | Is it really worth it to quibble about whether a question should be closed as too broad vs too opinion based. If an answer hinges on my opinion then there necessarily are multiple valid answers for alternate opinions. Sometimes a question asks multiple questions, isn't about worldbuilding, while also being too broad, and opinion based. The question should be closed, and selecting any of those reasons would be a valid choice. | |
| Jan 11, 2023 at 15:19 | history | answered | Tortliena - inactive | CC BY-SA 4.0 |