Have I become too strict with my VTC votes?

Question

I recently voted to close this question because it seemed to me that it didn't ask about a world, but the engineering of a specific item that could have been part of any world (and, by definition, appeared to be of Earth since no other conditions were given).

@Samuel has made some good points in the question's comments, but I still wonder. I've been thinking about some of the issues for a while, which led me to ask this previous meta question.

@Samuel and I have different interpretations of the on-topic page. What he sees is justification for the question. I see exclusion, principally because asking to engineer an object outside of the conditions of a fictional world is, to me, simply an "historical fact about the real world."

Side note: I have been personally drawing a line between these two questions ("how does this technology affect my world?" and "how can my world develop this technology?") and this question: ("how do I build this?"). I believe the first two are about developing a consitent fictional world. The second is an engineering question that may or not have any bearing on a fictional world depending on context, which wasn't provided.

Part of my concern is that we've had what seems to be a large number of closed/hold/duplicate questions since March 30 (about 31%). (I don't have access to the overall stats, so this perception may be subjective.) Are we seeing an increase in barely-on-topic questions, or am I being overly strict?

Thus, I would appeciate your insight into whether or not I voted too strictly to close the linked question.

Answer 1

I do agree that (subjectively at least) there appear to be more closures of late. That said (and again subjectively), I haven't noticed a considerable increase in 'off-topic' closures. There have been more duplicates, and more 'unclear what you're asking' closures, and I think there have also been a few more 'too broad' closures as well.

I would also like to see some stats to support one position or another, but the simple fact is that most of the posts from the questioners on Meta, and most of the discussions in question comments appear to be around whether a question is distinct from another question (duplicate testing) or what the OP was really getting at (unclear questions). There has been increased frustration from newer members of our august body trying to ask questions that will get past the VTC process but relevancy has not been brought up anywhere near as much IMHO as these other two points.

The duplicate question problem is one that I expect to only increase. We have nearly 16k questions on the site at the time of writing this; that means that a lot of the 'good' questions have already been asked and writing a new good question is similar in scope (but not in scale) to writing a PhD thesis in a well researched area. How does one create something unique AND significant when all the 'framework' research is already complete? Creating a new good unique and significant question on this site is only going to get harder and there is a strong argument for direct editing by people with sufficient experience on the site to make these questions stand apart if the OP lacks the linguistic skills to do so. That same approach may also work for 'unclear' questions, provided intent or purpose can be established by someone competent at framing questions to assist the newcomer.

That said, I digress. The core question goes to relevancy of question and I think that the linked question was certainly a margin call. Yes, it's an engineering question, but it's also a 'missing ingredient' question.

How do I do X when Y (a critical ingredient of X) is missing?

In this case, the question is asking if there is a simple technology that's understandable by an ancient Aztec / Mayan style culture, that's workable with their current tools and artisanry, that can replicate the equivalent of an infrared door sensor.

Your other question about us being a catch-all is entirely relevant here, but so is the point that we have the capacity of being a catch-all because of the subjective nature of our topic rules. As such, we can't have the penny and the bun; either we accept that our rules are too subjective and tighten them up (removing a lot of potential margin call questions) or we leave it as is and accept that we have additional maintenance on the back end (so to speak) to clean up prospective questions, either through working with the OP to tighten them up or by direct closure. Essentially, we have to pick one approach.

Personally? I prefer the latter. Just because some of our newer folk have trouble articulating their question it doesn't follow that the question itself is poor. I'd rather have a pool of candidates that I filter through to find the gems than miss a good opportunity to increase our body of knowledge but I do completely understand that this is a high maintenance approach, and will not be favoured by all.

In so doing, we not only solve the on topic problem, but it also serves as a way to solve the unclear and duplicate question issues at the same time.

Answer 2

the engineering of a specific item that could have been part of any world

The engineering of a specific item that is part of the setting of the world is Worldbuilding. That it might be part of any world simply makes it more useful.

(and, by definition, appeared to be of Earth since no other conditions were given).

There is no requirement that the world not be a representation of our current Earth. While we often talk about worlds as if they were planets being built, the site is broader than that. We help authors (of books, screenplays, games, etc.) to build fictional settings or worlds.

It's true that literal world building is part of our scope. But it's not all of our scope. We have many questions where it's only one detail in the world.

because asking to engineer an object outside of the conditions of a fictional world is, to me, simply an "historical fact about the real world."

No. That's a very aggressive interpretation. First, there is no evidence that this is outside a fictional world. The tone of the question screams author at me, because real people do not need to create traps that last multiple generations. They particularly don't need to create traps hundreds of years ago that are still in operation today. That's inherently part of a fictional world.

And an item that didn't exist historically is not a historical fact about the real world. Historical facts about the real world are things that actually existed or happened. E.g. "How were real murder holes built?" However, "How should murder holes have been built, given what we know now?" is a different, on-topic question.

That's not to say that this question is fine. It could be considered Too Broad for example. But it's not off-topic. I don't even see it as particularly borderline. Compare to How might modern humans leave a message for 50,000 years? Same basic problem. Someone wants to do something in a way that will last through the ages. So something that was easy becomes complicated through the need to make it last.

Answer 3

I don't think you voted too strictly. The question is borderline, and in particular I would say it's borderline in a way that some people could easily consider the ways it's off-topic to be the most important ones for the site, while others could consider the ways it's off-topic to be least important.

To make a comparison, imagine a question "How do I get my dog to stop barking?" In many ways this would be similar to the referenced How to build a trap to last the ages?: In both questions there would be no background information that makes it distinct from the real world, no technology constraints or additions that cause real-world answers to be invalid, no magic or hand-waving allowed. There are only two major differences I can think of: the dog one has a clear alternative stack exchange, and the trap one did list a worldbuilding-related justification, even if he made the question itself more broadly applicable.

To me, I think there are some very minor alterations that would make the trap question fall very clearly on one side or the other of "on-topic". For example, if the question instead asked

My world has trap-filled ancient ruins, but it was pointed out to me that the traps I have in them would in reality fail quickly without maintenance. What can I do to have traps that would believably be operational centuries later?

then it seems much more clearly to be a world building question!

On the other hand,

I am trying to build some traps, but I've noticed that they tend to go bad if I leave them set for too long. What can I do to make my traps last longer?

would seem very clearly off-topic - it's literally asking for suggestions on something the user is physically trying to construct.

Despite one of those phrasings being (to me) clearly on-topic, while the other is clearly off-topic, both questions (given a bit of extra finagling to get the allowed technology aligned) would end up with basically the exact same answers, those answers also being essentially identical to the ones in the actual question.

Hopefully this demonstrates just how borderline the question is, and how thinking of it as off-topic isn't really a matter of being "too strict" so much as seeing it closer to the off-topic versions than the on-topic ones. I don't think the line can really be cleaned up unless all questions reliant on currently-known technology and physics with no extra restrictions (e.g. only ancient tools) or additions (e.g. magic) are considered off-topic.

That said, it certainly is a popular question, so maybe others have a different idea than I do about how close to the border it is...