Advice to Querents asking "is X plausible or realistic?"

Question

A July 2022 renovation of the reality-check tag and others has changed the context of this question. It is now obsolete. Please see the following question and the link under "Conclusion." If we can't burn the "reality check" tag, can we rename it?

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We get a lot of questions asking "is X plausible?" or "is X realistic?" Considering the Help Center states that our goal is to help people build imaginary worlds, such questions seem unreasonable ("it's your world, it's plausible/realistic by definition"). But the real problem is that questions of this type usually don't have an actual problem to solve and intrinsically violate the following Help Center rule:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

Therefore, I am seeking advice for users concerning questions of the type, "is X plausible/realistic?"

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A Bit of History

Before the first "is X realistic?" question was asked, an astute worldbuilder asked whether or not such questions would even be on-topic. The question was not directly answered, but Monica's indirect answer is revealing:

Questions in this area should be about the problem you're trying to solve.

In other words (if Monica will forgive me for reading between her lines), they're off-topic.

A comment to her answer is also revealing:

If the question is "Is this realistic?" then you've already solved it.

And that's the basic problem with questions of this type.

• They could be a reality-check¹ question if all the proper details are provided.
• They may be masking a real worldbuilding problem.
• They may be masking the OP's insecurity about an otherwise really cool idea. In other words, there isn't a worldbuilding problem to solve, the OP's simply looking for an affirmation that they've created something worthwhile.

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_{¹ The reality-check tag is probably the most abused tag on this Stack. People use it without reading the wiki. They use it without even reading the one-sentence summary in the Help Center ("Provide the relevant details of your world and a situation and we will make sure it remains internally consistent."). My general opinion is that the correct solution for improving questions of the type "is X plausible/realistic?" is not to convert them to a reality-check question, but to help the OP identify the actual problem they're trying to solve.²}

_{² In case you were wondering, the difference between a good reality-check question and a bad one is seen in this example: bad: "Is this bridge realistic?" good: "I designed a bridge with the following characteristics (list...), I expect the following kind of traffic to use the bridge (list...), is my bridge realistic?" The bad example presents a usually fictional idea and asks that it be judged against Real Life — where the fictional idea doesn't exist and therefore the check intrinsically fails. The good example lists the relevant rules of the user's world and a relevant situation that would use those rules and asks if the use of the rules is consistent.}

Answer 1

Make it the Usual

There are essentially two kinds of Reality Check queries: the good kind and the other kind. As you point out, "is this plausible / realistic / sensible / reasonable" questions are all a type of reality check. The issue is then whether it's well conceived and composed or whether it still needs work.

The usual advice to give the querent here is the same I'd give to anyone who just wrote a question that has problems: edit to resolve the problems; review the pertinent resources to guide your question formation.

As it turns out, you, Jerenda, Monica and the TagWiki are all dancing a lovely bransle around the issue! The querent's problem can be resolved by:

1. Ensuring that there is an actual worldbuilding problem. If there's no problem to solve, the question should be deleted. At the least, it should be closed until the querent can dig up a reasonable worldbuilding problem to solve.
2. Proper tagging. The question should be tagged reality-check, because asking about plausibility, realism, sensibility and the like are at worst near synonyms for a reality check. We must all remember that reality checks ask about whether a concept or phenomenon makes sense within its own fictional context, not the real world.
3. Proper content. Questions should provide the proper details: there might be some flaws in my solution, so I ask here if my solution is realistic --- we have to know the "relevant details" of the world to answer the question.

If the problem is anything other than a worldbuilding problem, then it's off topic here and would probably best be asked on a discussion forum. Insecurity of one's own imagination or descriptive powers can't be dealt with here!

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In order to help such users along, it might be a good idea to review the ideas in this Meta question, along with the points made in the linked Meta question and fold them into the tag wiki itself.

It seems that the tag wiki could really use a short paragraph on how to write a good reality check query!