Should the Xenobiology tag automatically imply science-based or hard-science?

Question

In a comment to a recent question, @Nosajimiki made a good point. The OP had not tagged the question hard-science or science-based, so I chastised other respondents for taking a hard-line Real World stance about the OP's premise based on the idea that Real Life cannot be an overriding limitation on any question unless specifically requested.

@Nosajimiki pointed out that the xenobiology tag demands hard science.

At this time "xenobiology" is strictly defined using the Wikipedia page, which is discussing (and these are my words) the professional study of biology in terms of what chemistry could allow outside of Earth-centric biology. In other words, the Wikipedia page isn't discussing creature-design. Far from it.

In fact, the fundamental problem is (since new users never read tag wikis) that users are using the xenobiology tag based on their own personal expectations and not at all based on what wikipedia says about the academic investigation into the limits of chemistry-based biology.

Question: Should the xenobiology tag automatically imply the hard-science or science-based tags?

"No" would mean rewriting the Xenobiology tag wiki. Frankly, it's a poor wiki right now, relying on another web page which can change and has, itself, nothing to do with worldbuilding to establish the context of the idea for worldbuilding. Honestly, I think the wiki should be improved regardless what decision is made here.

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Existing tag short-summary

Use this tag to mark questions related to creating plausible alien biologies that may be close to or far removed from Earthly biology but within the realms of hard science.

Existing tag wiki

See Wikipedia entry. Xenobiology describes a form of biology that is not familiar to science and is not found in Earthly life. Novel biological systems and biochemistries that differ from the canonical DNA-RNA-20 amino acid system, which can include variations on the same these (e.g. different amino acids), totally different systems (such as the SF staple of silicon-based life).

This can include different biochemistry, or different biological systems and organs without regard to the underlying chemestry.

Answer 1

In General, I believe it's a bad idea to assume the use of hard-science, science-based, or internal-consistency

People use tags to contextualize their questions without first reading the tags regularly. This is a behavior we should anticipate as often as possible. Therefore, no tag should assume (either implicitly or explicitly) the use of hard-science, science-based, or internal-consistency and when wikis are found to explicitly do so, those wikis should be modified to remove the assumption.

Why? Because we have tags that explicitly scope answers and they should be used. Far too often people use a tag with a preconceived notion of what that tag means. I suspect that if we kept the xenobiology's assumption of hard-science, then far too many (if not most) of the questions tagged xenobiology fail the expectation entirely.

You'll notice that I didn't include the science-fiction tag. I don't believe the default position of this Stack should be science-based. Other stacks already exist for that purpose. Further, the issue has been brought up before and was down voted. I do not know of an existing policy on the matter beyond that question other than if an OP doesn't ask for magic, then we should assume science, which I agree with. But I believe the Stack's default should be science-fiction.

In specific, I believe that worldbuilding should embrace more in terms of xenobiology than what is defined for the academic study of xenobiology

At this time, I don't appreciate how narrowly focused the tag's wiki is. I'm willing to grant that if we define xenobiology to be something closer to, "questions that ask about the biology of extraterrestrial lifeforms," the result is that xenobiology and creature-design become synonyms.

But maybe they should, because I believe creature-design + hard-science = xenobiology and we have a lot of tags already.

OK, I am in favor of making creature-design and xenobiology synonyms with an appropriate wiki review so the merge makes good sense — including a statement that says if the OP wants to adhere to the Wikipedia definition, the appropriate solution is to include the hard-science tag.

Answer 2

NO

The xenobiology tag should not imply either hard science or science based. I'm actually surprised that the term "hard science" appears in the tag definition. I do not know for certain, but suspect that most users of this tag probably mean it in its traditional, sci-fi usage: the study of alien / non-terrestrial life. Such as might be found in Star Trek, etc. And thus akin to creature design. I also have the feeling that the phrase "within the realms of hard science" in that tag definition derives from biology itself being a hard science, rather than a reference to a specific science tag.

I argue that tag use is the querent's prerogative, and if they wish to focus xenobiology with one of the science tags, that's up to them. If they don't, that's fine too.

I do concur with the idea of improving the xenobiology tag's description. That ought to align more with worldbuilding principles and thus with the traditional and current sci-fi meaning. As humanity moves out into space and, perhaps, discovers some radically different life forms out there, then perhaps xenobiology will become an actual branch of biology. We can make a new tag when that happens!

Answer 3

Keep the tag more-or-less as is

Xenobiology is by definition the application of science to predict the nature of alien life forms. We may not know for sure the limits of life in so far as what exactly it can be made of or its exact limits, but there are still tons of very safe assumptions the rules of chemistry and physics will still apply to it in so far as chemistry and physics apply to the things it is made out of, it exists because it was either created, evolved, or both, things like that. I don't think Xenobiology tags should expect a "Hard Science" level of details per our site's definition of Hard Science, but you can't really call it Xenobiology without at least a "Science Based" consideration of the factors at play.

... But we also need a "Science Fantasy" tag.

I had an art teacher once who used to say, "You have to learn the rules before you can learn when to break them". Worldbuilding is a lot like that. It's a constant fight against a person's suspension of disbelief. So, every choice you make to violate the known laws of nature in a compelling way generally requires that you know the laws of nature first. Especially in the genre of Science Fiction, there is a huge expectation these days that your technobabble touch on enough reality to not just sound like you picked some fancy words by throwing darts at a board.

If you are writing science fiction and choose not to care about real world science, that is a different thing all together. George Lukas knew that the Force was just magic placed in a future setting, and that's okay, but when you do that it needs to be a conscious choice so that you know when to lampshade and when to handwave to keep from losing your audience. When you write bad science into science fiction by accident, it usually just comes off as bad writing.

For this reason, I think it's important when discussing questions about science fiction settings to make the OP say in some way shape or form when they don't care about real science instead of just assuming they did it on purpose. So, by having a "Science Fantasy" tag, we know when we come across something ridiculously unscientific to just accept the magic and move on.