I believe I've finally figured out why I dislike "How can X evolve?" questions and what to do about it. I believe the proposal would help with the questions tremendously — at least if anyone reads the wiki.
The current wiki states:
Evolution is the theory, put forth by Charles Darwin in his book On the Origin of Species, that species change over long periods of time. Though it was opposed at first by religious groups, it is generally accepted today in the scientific community as being accurate.
This is for questions that have to do with how certain species and/or traits evolve, why one trait might become dominant, or how certain traits could influence the species as it continues to evolve. It may also include what types of environments would encourage or support the evolution of different traits.
If you have a very speculative life-form design, consider using creature-design instead. Also consider biology.
The proverbial thorn in my side, as demonstrated by a spate of "how can X evolve?" questions over the last three weeks, is this: While humanity has discovered a lot about the fact of evolution, we're still just scratching the surface when it comes to why evolution. Most of the "why" part (which seems to be what people are looking for, i.e., "evolutionary pressures") is reverse-engineered.
Let's consider ears as an example. We can look at the many different kinds of ears today such as a horse's forward-pointing ears and humans side-facing ears, and examine what value and/or purpose they have right now. Once we know that purpose, we can look backward into evolutionary history and identify specific pressures that caused those ears to come to pass. That relationship is important: we understand both the history and the value/purpose/reason today, thus we can identify pressures.
Unfortunately, most (if not all) "how could X evolve?" questions fail to explain why anything exists. We're painted the proverbial picture, told only about what something looks like and then asked to identify pressures that would bring that fanciful aesthetic to pass.
In some cases we can jump to a conclusion. For example, asking "how would a human having four arms rather than just two evolve?" is defensible in that we know very intimately what arms/elbows/hands do, and so we can imagine pressures that would favor the development of four rather than two.
But when something completely fanciful is presented and there's no apparent reason for it (the OP simply wants the "look" of the thing and, for reasons unknown, wants to know what over the course of millions of years would bring that "look" to pass). It is this behavior that I propose we bring to a screeching halt with the following modification to the wiki (in bold):
Evolution is the theory, put forth by Charles Darwin in his book On the Origin of Species, that species change over long periods of time. Though it was opposed at first by religious groups, it is generally accepted today in the scientific community as being accurate.
This is for questions that have to do with how certain species and/or traits evolve, why one trait might become dominant, or how certain traits could influence the species as it continues to evolve. It may also include what types of environments would encourage or support the evolution of different traits.
Questions using this tag that seek to understand what evolutionary pressures, conditions, or environments would bring about or favor the development of a specific trait must identify the purpose, value, or reason the proposed trait exists. Questions seeking evolutionary justification for a trait that is presented merely as an aesthetic (e.g., my creature looks like...) risk being closed for needing more details.
Questions should remain as focused as possible. Users should avoid presenting an entire life-form and asking how that creature in its entirety could evolve as specific traits of that life-form would evolve for very different reasons than others. Ideally, questions using this tag are focusing on individual traits.
If you have a very speculative life-form design, consider using creature-design instead. Also consider biology.
BTW: Yup, I tend to be verbose. It comes from growing up in a family full of lawyers. If you feel there's a more concise way to express this proposed change, I'm all ears (hah...).
