There are too many world UNbuilding answers and comments

Question

When I joined this site, I felt I missed a lot by not joining before. I really enjoy the questions as well as the answers.

Not to be misunderstood, I am a scientist myself. I always trust in concrete proofs and facts. However, this site is called world building. Which - in my understanding - means you primarily use your imagination. You imagine a world -- or a scenario, and then ask a questions about it.

What I've seen is people who are trying to either convince everyone how absurd/stupid the question is or finding a loophole in the world. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think this is right way to encourage people (especially newcomers like me) to post in this site.

For instance, this comment to my question is very productive and extending the quality:

I'm pretty sure that by 2999, the audio/visual style advertising as we know it will be gone and instead ads just be a constant series of battles between the various advertisers' mind-control devices and our anti-mind-control devices.

However, I see many comments in various post that basically say "you're so dumb, let me point out where you are mistaken."

if needed, I can refer to sources but I do not want to make this a personal discussion

What I see here is people are free to ask about

effects of events or world elements, including biology, technology and magic, on specific aspects of that world's societies, cultures, and environment

but they are frequently found not realistic/easily refutable, despite one of the tags say

far-future

For questions of Earth\humans that extrapolate beyond available data: hundreds of years at least, thousands commonly, millions preferably.

which clearly indicates you are free as a bird to imagine a world, of whose possibility of reality cannot be discussed.

I am using SO for a long time, and I just wanted to sincerely remind:

There is always a downvote option if you did not like the question. Comments are perfect for asking clarifications. Answering the asked question is a perfect way to go. But commenting or answering "this question makes no sense since this and this are never possible" is not OK.

If someone asked about anatomically correct phoenix, commenting or answering

When a living creature is burnt, there is no way to undo because when oxygen and carbon reacts, then the gas revealed is mixed into air. Therefore, this question makes no sense.

is neither improving the post nor serving the purpose of this very site. I would recommend Puzzling.SE for those who seek posts those are concretely fact-based and without loopholes.

Question: Do you think I am being too sensitive?

Answer 1

One of the issues with Worldbuilding Stack Exchange - and worldbuilding in general, really - is that everyone has different criteria for what "realistic" means, or what is possible or what isn't. That's the great thing about imagination: You can do anything, if you change the boundaries of what is or isn't possible.

The thing is, people often don't know if something in their world will work. I often don't, so I ask questions here. We even have a tag for people wanting to know if a premise is realistic or possible, reality-check. In those cases, it's absolutely fine for answers to say "This will not work" if the question is asking for an evaluation. Anatomically Correct Phoenix, the question you linked, uses the tag, but it uses the tag only because it asks, as a side note, if there's anything that definitively indicates that the entire setup is possible.

Now, there's a difference between saying "No, this won't work" and saying "No, this won't work, and it's because [X, Y, and Z]." The second kind of answers are the sort we want; the first type are generally useless and should be downvoted. Even if the answer says that something isn't possible but only gives a couple sentences explaining why, it may be unhelpful. Answers contradicting the premise should be detailed, because often the reason the author missed the impossibility is that it isn't immediately obvious.

I think the community consensus is that it is almost always okay to refute the premise within the laws of plausibility of the world¹, unless the author specifically indicates that they are handwaving away some impossibility, with, for instance, magic. I do agree with this; if I want it to rain in my world all day, every day, but there's something that makes this completely impossible, I really, really want to know that.

Basically, there is a huge range of levels of plausibility between questions. Some are willing to handwave away pretty much anything; others want detailed, scientifically rigorous answers (see hard-science). If a question uses laws that does not make sense within the context of the world, it is always okay to challenge it in an answer. You just have to be sure that you understand what exactly the limitations are.

Oh, and if anyone says "This is dumb", flag away. Insults like that are not okay, no matter how inconsistent the premise is.

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¹ Our default assumptions are generally that worlds retain our universe's laws of science, and answers should try to use logic and science, where possible. Obviously, the author needs to tell us if there is something about the world that's different.

Answer 2

I've actually seen far too many instances of what you mention.

In my view this is how the Q&A should work:

The question asserts either

• a premise, that is to say the initial state of an aspect of their world, and asks how that premise would affect the development of something within that world...

My world has 19 suns, how would that affect the religion of the humans of that world?

• ...or a desired outcome and asks how to achieve it (though I suppose this could also be considered a premise from an atemporal point of view).

What socio-economic pressures would cause war between my world's elves and fairies?

The answers should simply build upon these premises or desired outcomes, but never refute them outright or poke holes in them. Much as how axioms work in mathematics. By build upon, I mean find ways to alter the premise to make it concordant with reality. In the anatomically correct Phoenix answer, the accepted question does this brilliantly: the phoenixes don't actually get reborn, they simply lay an egg before lighting themselves on fire, which looks as if they get reborn from their ashes.

Edit: There is actually a 3rd type of question that I for some reason totally forgot about; ones that ask whether something is plausible or not, in these cases, yes it is fine for an answer to refute it as not so (if they provide adequate reasoning, of course).

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Now on the other hand problems arise when the question demands too much or have too many restrictions. I'm sure you all know what I mean, questions similar to:

Only using hard-science how can I propel rockets in my world 6,193,091 billion-million times faster then light only using a thumbtack and three shoelaces?

(yes I am exaggerating but sadly not that much actually).

In these cases any answer given will never be able to fulfill the full extent of the initial query. This further becomes problematic when those answers get berated by comments displaying their shortcomings.

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So the real question is: how fantastical can a question reasonably be?

And when people don't agree on the answer of the above, that is when you get the complications you talk about.

Answer 3

The other Stack Exchanges don't generally allow hypotheticals the way WB SE does. That has to impact our standard for how to ask questions. Easy example: When so many of the questions are looking for loopholes, responding with an obvious loophole (i.e. "your world is impossible") strikes me as a valid response.

Another example:

But commenting or answering "this question makes no sense since this and this are never possible" is not OK.

Within the scope of WorldBuilding, I see no way to apply this standard when so many of the questions are about hypotheticals: "Assume A and B, now C happens, what's the result?" To reply "A and B cannot happen together so we cannot derive the result you request" seems like a perfectly valid response UNLESS the OP specifies HOW they are allowing A and B to happen... but they frequently do not. Without the rules of magic/handwavium, we cannot extrapolate the effect of that magic/handwavium on this world, nor can we theorize what another world where magic/handwavium exists would look like.

Your phoenix example is a perfect situation to examine.

The challenge is to make an anatomically correct phoenix. If someone raises an objection that says, "This cannot be done and you cannot even begin to get close, full stop." that is a legit answer. To use an example from my own field, "How can I optimize for both performance and memory use at the same time?" an answer would be, "You cannot without some sort of handwavium." If the question provided no handwavium, then, in my opinion, this is answering the question, not invalidating it.

I think that's a really important point, so I'll say it again: In the context of WorldBuilding, answering that "X is impossible without more handwavium" is an answer, not a rejection of the question.

And that sets WB apart from other SE sites. In my opinion.

Answer 4

Do you think I am being too sensitive?

Yes and no.

While people tend to be a little heavy handed when refuting a premise, refuting the premise often leads to a much better premise.

If the questions amount to "my world works this way, due to suspension of disbelief (handwavium), how do I explain it or what are the results of it?" A response that amounts to "you're using an awful lot of handwavium" should be expected.

I know that I'm retreading already covered ground, I guess I'm trying to point out why people do it... If the premise is thin to begin with you're asking for a greater suspension of disbelief. This isn't always a bad thing, but sometimes something that is being handwaved can be reworked slightly and make for a more believable world.

This is an area where science fiction worlds and fantasy worlds tend to clash, or perhaps better put, where science fiction creators clash with fantasy creators... While there is obviously overlap in audience, the style of the creation and the expected "reality" is often different.

More or less, I'd like to continue to see both types of response. Some that take the premise and run with it and others that challenge the premise and offer creative solutions. Hopefully both add something worthwhile to the world in question, but more importantly having both types of response will help future world builders.

Answer 5

I know exactly how you feel, and IMHO, you are not being too sensitive. I began here last summer, thoroughly enjoying open minds and expansive imaginations. I soon learned that even a Really Good answer is often subject to snarky, mean-spirited and pointless commentary. This has kept me from ever asking even one question.

I took a six month hiatus out of disgust and disappointment.

Other SE, yes. In here, no way. Too often too opinionated, too careless with other peoples' interests and feelings.

Answer 6

It's often necessary to pull apart bits of a question, and sometimes the whole thing, to get at what the OP actually wants from the answers. But I feel you have a genuine grievance not only because there is a lot of it, and users who seem to do nothing else, but also because of the tone many people take when they're making such comments. I've gotten close to dumping the exchange altogether after such answers have been heavily rewarded to spite the fact that they make no positive contribution.