Is World Building a good fit for Stack Exchange?

Question

I was reading an answer to one of the questions asked on Meta - a question I think needs revisiting.

The answer states the following:

Ask 10 people what "Worldbuilding" is, and you'll get 11 different answers. For some it will be analyzing the effects of magic on world economy, for others designing the weather system for planet in a particular orbit.

And you know what? None of them would be wrong. Worldbuilding truly is an incredibly broad topic, from creature design, to linguistics, and much, much more.

However.

Worldbuilding.com, is part of the Stack Exchange family of sites. This implies certain standards as far as the reusability of the questions, and answers are concerned.

I quite often see the phrase "your question is not a good fit for this site."

However, this answer leads me to think, is World Building a good fit for Stack Exchange?

Should the rules of this site reflect the rigorous standards of Stack Exchange, or should the rules reflect the more broad term of World Building?

For instance, allowing users to mark multiple answers as correct would be a good start. This would allow this site to be more subjective - and World Building is inherently subjective.

Plenty of people will be coming here with a correct idea of what World Building is, only to get their question downvoted or closed because it doesn't align with the restrictive set of rules this site uses. It seems unfair to me to punish users simply because this World Building site is part of Stack Exchange. Instead of expecting the users to adhere to restrictive rules, shouldn't we be petitioning Stack Exchange to give us more flexible tools?

Do you think that the subject of World Building works well on a site that uses a restrictive question-and-single-correct-answer format? And beyond imposing more rules on the users, what can be done to improve this situation?

Answer 1

Based on all of the meta questions I have read and the many issues I have seen in chat and closed questions, I am leaning towards no. My reasoning is pretty much what other people here and on other questions have posted. Stack Exchange Q&A or any Q&A website really (excluding interview type ones) work best when there is one or maybe two ideal answers. Worldbuilding by its very nature is not only very broad but subjective so the community determining what is a good answer can often be difficult or even controversial.

Another issue is that this place seemed to have lost its direction. It used to be more casual and cooperative in enhancing story ideas. I would have loved to be a member of this place 6 years ago. Now I just see a lot more shooting down ideas or rules-lawyering. Pretty much the only questions you see nowadays are either better fits for other stackexchanges (principally the physics/history ones) or could arguably be closed for being story/opinion-based.

Speaking of rules, they badly need an update. The community standards of this place has changed but the rules themselves have been mostly unchanged since 2018. As a result, even new contributors who read the rules and other upvoted questions get their threads downvoted and closed; they didn't understand the unspoken rules that the most senior members abide by. Unwritten rules shouldn't exist on the Internet. I'm fairly certain that if all the sample questions from the help center were deleted and resubmitted, most of them would be downvoted and closed.

The final thing I will say is that the detail standards of this stackexchange isn't conducive to helping the most amount of people. Obviously, answerers need context for your story, especially since they can't research your story in your head independently, but an overly precise question won't help a lot of people. This is true in stackoverflow but it is an even larger issue with worldbuilding since people are writing their own stories instead of reading textbooks on the same topics. If a user does make some precise questions but asks a few of them in order to get information for their world, they are accused of "mindless social fun" and future topics about it are downvoted/closed.

So overall, Stack Exchange is not a good home for worldbuilding. Stack Exchange is best for issues like hard sciences and mathematics where there is an objectively true or false answer. Stack Exchange is also a good home for topics like Law or Religion or History where this is generally precise writing to answer an inquiry. Worldbuilding is too broad to have firm but fair evaluation and moderation. As a result, many users feel this place is firm and unfair instead. Worldbuilding is much more streamlined and cooperative on Reddit and Quora as opposed to this place; although those websites have their own issues.

If the rules and guidelines were updated, that would fix many issues. But before that happens, this community has to reform itself and decide whether it wants to be either a generalist science Stackexchange or community writing Stackexchange.

Answer 2

We're so far outside SE's sweetspot I wonder if we were a test case

Stack Exchange, as designed for and by its flagship Stack, Stack Overflow, is based on a single concept that's almost incompatible with any creative or imaginative effort:

There is only one best answer.

You suggested that we allow multiple answers to be marked correct. That very idea represents the core of the problem. How we use Stack Exchange is ruled over entirely by our Stack Exchange Overlords. We, the users of Worldbuilding, have no ability whatsoever to make a change to how the software works.

In fact, we have only a bare minimum of ability to change how the Help Center reads. And even less influence over the VTC reasons.

In fact, if you don't accept the idea that we can create policies here in Meta, then the reality you're questioning is that the people who wrote and own this software control the proverbial 99% of how their software is used.

Unfortunately, one best answer is something we have trouble with

A sizable number of questions that come to this site can't have a single best answer. Not won't. Can't. The community has been debating the idea of list answers, fishing-for-ideas questions, brainstorming, etc. almost since the day the site came out of Area 51. It's obviously true that some latitude should be made for creativity and imagination.

Except for the reality that we don't control most of the rules.

We could choose to ignore them, but here's the rub, they exist. Which means we can expend all our energy telling people to ignore the rules or expend the very same amount of energy telling people to obey the rules. Because matter what we do, there are the rules, and there will always be people who want to obey them and those who want to ignore them.

Kinda sounds like real life....

But, if you ignore all the collateral damage, there is value here

And there is collateral damage. New users rarely read the rules before playing and no matter how politely, kindly, or lovingly you try to explain why they can't ask the question they are, they're going to take critical feedback, down votes, and closure personally.

But if people try, what the'll discover is this whacky stack trying to march to the tune of people we've never met or seen requires them to really think through what their problem is.

Maybe that's ruthless, but the site can work for creative and imaginative worlbuilding if you're willing to embrace the rules.

Answer 3

TLDR: We're not, but we try to make it work

We're an one of the more out-there sites trying to fit into the Stack Exchange network. When this site was proposed we went through a growing period where we attempted to figure out how to make such a broad and subjective topic work within the Stack Exchange model. Part of our criteria for being created was to show that we could support questions that fit the Stack Exchange model. By design many questions that are about worldbuilding will not be appropriate for this site.

This is the case for any exchange, about any topic. There are questions about programming that aren't appropriate for Stack Overflow. This is by design. Besides network effects the distinguishing element of Stack Exchange from other QA sites is the structure they impose on questions. This structure forms the core of the SE design philosophy, and they attribute their success, to this focused structure.

They choose to build a site with close voting as something automatically earned by participating in common actions on the site. They chose to have multiple closure reasons, to highlight the multiple types of questions they don't want asked on this site. If the intent was to support discussions, the whole site would have been built differently. This is also reflected in their constant rejection of requests for features, like accepting multiple answers, that would make for a less structured experience.

We're a strange experiment, in the far corners of the SE model. We're not a revenue center. They will never invest developer time in Worldbuilding specific features, especially if it would allow us to stray further from the SE model. I suspect that if we attempted to turn this site into a free-for-all without moderation they'd be more inclined to nuke the whole site rather than support something so far outside of what is promised by the Stack Exchange experience.

We can not reject the fundamentals of a Stack Exchange site and still be a Stack Exchange site. We'd loose what makes us distinct. If you want less structure and moderation there are better platforms out there. The creativity of the worldbuilding subreddit is phenomenal. If you want less structured worldbuilding Q&A you could give worldbuilding Quora a try. Given that our whole mandate is worldbuilding in the Stack Exchange model giving that up would be to reject our design mandate.

There are plenty of successful questions that fit well within our model. Most of the friction seems comes from people who are either ignorant of the model or choose to ignore it. This is why we close old questions, to reduce that friction. The more misalignment there is between people following the sprit and structure of this site, and people who are just looking for a place to post anything vaguely related to worldbuilding, the worse that friction is going to be.

The best we can do is moderation, and education. If inappropriate questions are quickly closed before receiving answers, the incentive to continue asking inappropriate questions is removed. If old questions are closed if they aren't suitable under current policy, then people will using them as an example of how to ask a well received question on this site. It seems harsh but anything else drives us away from what we promise in our tour,

We're a little bit different from other sites. Here's how:

Answer 4

I'm actually wondering why this question was voted down so harshly. We have a continuous shower of inappropriate questions that have to be fended off, so this is something that absolutely bears discussion.

No Popularity Contests

I looked into the idea of asking Stack Exchange to create a second site specifically for the kind of worldbuilding that most of the visitors seem to want to do. It would be awesome to have a brainstorming site that we could point people to when they posted their inappropriate questions.

The issue there is that Stack Exchange was designed to provide concrete answers. They want people to be able to go to a question and find AN answer. If you shift to a brainstorming model, then you drift off into speculative territory where the points system just becomes a popularity contest.

Popularity contests are 100% anathema to Stack Exchange. This is an essential hard line that they drew because, otherwise, their software engineering pages would be overrun by questions of camel case vs. snake case, where there is neither a clear answer nor a clear reason to be arguing.

Alternatives

Where does that leave us? Ideally, there should be somewhere else that we can send people when they want to throw out their bright ideas for brainstorming.

Reddit

The problem there is that Reddit doesn't have a Q&A format. It's just people putting out "look at me, I'm so cool" posts that others can respond to. In truth, a good third of the inappropriate posts we see here fall into that category, but that doesn't manage the remainder that are looking for input or ideas.

Quora

Quora is a better option, but they have taken an unfortunate turn towards monetization. Their worldbuilding space is actually a curated spot where people pull in answers from across Quora that might be interesting to an audience, or attempt to write insightful articles. Also, they stuff advertising in every other line.

Anywhere else?

What does that leave us with? Where can we send these people to fulfill their need for serious, but less targeted, Q&A?

Answer 5

I would like to read where Stack Exchange has such stringent requirements. Not being snarky -- I just would like to see these rules and my 30 seconds of trying to find the origin of the "certain standards" claim has failed to find where they are written.

Because fierce enforcement of that idea is frankly why Arqade is such a useless substack. Ignoring that idea is why the SciFi stack is so lively.

Arqade doesn't let anyone ask about a video game they partially remembered, because it's not considered to be generally useful knowledge. Boring buzzkills. SciFi allows it, and consequently quite a lot of content is people asking and answering questions about partially remembered books, stories and movies. I don't know how useful it is but I find it entertaining and sometimes find new books or things to read just based on someone's half-remembered question and someone else linking a short story or book. Like, it's useful, if not necessarily in the Stack Overflow sense.

So, anecdotally, Arqade is strictly following the "certain standards" and it's a dull and nearly dead community where a lot of people ask extremely specific, uninteresting questions and often get few if any answers.

Worldbuilding is far livelier and more interesting and if ignoring the rules is how we got here, let's keep ignoring them.

Addendum for posterity: this excellent Stack Overflow blog entry. Particularly the "Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions". Stack Exchange recognizes that things can be opinions and still be valid. They recognize this enough that they made a programming stack just for opinion-based questions. That blog has an excellent description of what makes some opinion-based Q&A good, and, therefore, what defines a "bad" opinion based Q&A.

Answer 6

Frankly I feel like you might be onto something. I'm relatively new to this, being on here for at least a month now more or less, and I came world building cause I like to do characterizations and making stories to entertain myself (I know it sounds dorky and lame but whatever) and when I found out about this site it seemed interesting and maybe fun cause I thought I could ask questions I wouldn't be able ask anywhere else. Suddenly though I find this site has quite a few problems.

1. This site is very stiff and restrictive

This site is way too strict with their rules, with my first question being flagged for being open ended. Now I admit knowing what I did wrong I do understand it was mostly my own fault and when I narrowed it down I did get more answers, but it didn't change the fact that for an entire week I kept having to make changes to my question and each time it was flagged I got a down vote and it ultimately ended up having -4 down votes which I feel is really harsh, espescially since it was every time my edit was rejected. Didn't help that someone already gave an answer and therefore made it harder to just change the question, not to mention you actually get penalized for just deleting your question. I asked another question later on and it up for about a week until suddenly it was finally decided it was too "opinion based", after someone aleady answered mind you.

2. The site is very arbitrary on what's "opinion based" and "open ended"

When it came to my first question I was it was too open ended which I admit it was, but when I got on the sandbox to practice my questions I faced a similar problem, being told that many of my questions are too open ended. In addition to this I actually asked a question on the sandbox where I did get a bunch of possible answers, which while it was helpful in terms of feedback that's not what the sandbox is for, and when I asked a few times if the question is good enough to not get flagged, and when I actually posted it, my question after a week for being "opinion based". My question is what does mean though, what is an open ended or opinion based question and frankly how can I ask a world building question without it being open ended or opinion based. After all we're talking about events and scenarios that haven't happened nor will it likely happen in the world so its hard not to be simply opinion based or open ended. Frankly insisting on limiting how open ended and opinion based the question is very arbitrary since you deciding how open ended and opinion based the question is is in itself based on opinion. I also looked and found quite a few questions that fall under "open ended" or "opinion based" and yet they're still up and open for answers such as "How does a species who cannot distinguish left from right build their cities?" or "Would the principles of Stack Exchange work in a real-world utopia?", which really reinforces the question as to what questions are "too" open ended and opinion based and aren't, and I feel I should mention with my questions of "Would it make sense for an entity who can control tangible and/or intangible matterials be able to manipulate electricity but not light" I was accused of trying to have people write my story for me and, with this question spefically, asking a question that doesn't belong because it's based on opinion, so I wonder how these two questions above don't fall under such categories and aren't flagged if this is the case.

3. This site is pretty hostile and unwelcoming

When I first started asking questions I was met with a lot criticism and when I tried to delete my question to start over I was told that's not ok and the new question was flagged and had comment telling me what was spamming and not smart. This is site tends to feel pretty hostile and toxic to the point where it's no wonder so many leave after a short amount of time. Don't get wrong there have been helpful people and feedback here and there, one person in particular being JBH who was very helpful, gave pretty good feedback and was actually nice, as well a few people who actually provided decent feedback and answer my questions. Unfortunately there were too few in number to actually make a difference with everyone else being so hostile and critical that I was terrified of asking questions since I kept getting more penalties from the site itself, which is a very sign if you're afraid to ask questions on a site where you're supposed to ask questions. Seriously with how little i see certain people commenting ir answering on few occasions I dont get flagged tgose same people who complain about my questions seem pretty quiet when there's nothing they can actually flag about my question, making it feel like most of these people are less focused on helping and getting help as they are enforcing these arbitrary rules and shaming you for maybe deviating a little from these rules that in a way restrict creative thinking.

4. This is ironically more distracting than distraction free

This site prides itself on being a space to ask and answer questions without distraction which is why questions that deviate from the rules are blocked until fixed. That said though I've notice this site's add things such as badges and reputation which are required to do literally anything on here. I wasn't even able to comment on any of these answers or comments because it requires 50 reputation when I only have 37. My point being that the notion of needing reputation to do anything as well as the badge system becomes pretty distracting in itself since it promotes attempting to gain reputation for the sole purpose of gaining privileges such as being able to judge someone elses question and have it flagged and getting badges that serve no real purpose other than just having the badges, and the reputation only says you've participated in ways that are approved but doesn't actually prove you really know what you're talking about when it comes to answers or questions. If I'm being frank I feel like now when it comes to asking questions on this site I'm less focused on asking a question and what my question is as I am focused on asking a question that won't get flagged and force me have to edit so many times just to get an answer, and I guarantee I'm not the only one who've encountered this problem. On top of that the upvote/down vote system is also pretty distracting since it's basically a "rate my question" system that either makes you feel good about you're question or feel bad about it, especially since you can get negative votes, which is honestly pretty harsh as I've mention, but also promotes the kind of behavior you see on any standard social media where you're really just focused on gaining popularity through getting as many upvotes as possible through you're question or answer, which is especially ironic because I've also been told that this is not a social site and yet the behaviorsays otherwise.

Conclusion

World building stack exchange is so strict and restrictive that frankly it practically prohibits creative thinking and drains any fun out of participating on the site. In addition to this the amount of reputation to do anything as well as the constant fear that you're question will get flagged and the desire to earn badges all makes the site itself pretty good and distracting, completely defeating the whole purpose of the site of having no distraction. This site has a bit of hostility towards newcomers that would explain why so many end up just leaving after a while, using arbitrary definitions of questions being too "opinion based" or "open ended" which themselves are based on opinion, as well as having people who seem less interested in asking or answering questions as they are making sure everyone follows the rules and flagging any who doesn't. If there was an alternative to this site I would like to know because have had quite a bit frustrations during my short amount of time on here with my only joining being that I thought I could satisfy my nerdy desire to know stuff and maybe have fun doing so but instead was met with such strictness that's its really hard to do any of that, even being told that this site is not for fun as that would make it a social site and yet has the attributesof a social site such as rating systems and badges. I guarantee those who defend this site are just the ones who've been here longer and accumulated more reputation and badges and therefore get all the perks that someone new would likely have to spend a long time trying to earn which would ge distracting when you think about it. So I believe these rules only work to a certain extent.

Answer 7

Just out of an "exchange" with a couple members of the site in the comments of a question i posted a short answer to, mods or quasi-mods... I don't know. Exchange is in quotes because they deemed deleting my comments and replying in the same thread with their own as appropriate handed.

The foundation in the question is common enough here. "Is fantasy thing X possible with today's technology?" Sadly also common enough is the response in the comments under the OP, paraphrasing it to the generic: It's your world your story, just do it!

I replied to the comenter, "unhelpful" and then posted my answer. This apparently triggered/offended someone, Somehow, since both comments were equally useless to the OP.

The above is just an illustration of the subject of this thread. The OP is building a world to write a story, this element plays a significant part. The particulars of it matter to him, and presents a problem that he lacks the experience in the real world to address. So he comes here to help resolve that lack of perspective. Only to get one of several responses that they are very likely to take as:

• You are dumb
• You are wasting our time
• You did not read the 18 pages of rules, therefor shut up.
• This question was asked 5 years ago, so were not going to let anyone add any new thoughts on this question. Closed.
• You did not phrase your question exactly to my liking the way I interpret the stack rules. Also I'm not going to take the time to help you adjust the question even though it is obvious with 95% probability that I know exactly what you are asking, you just lack the brains to do it satisfactorily.

Now remember, we don't know why the question was asked (Is that even our business?). Why meaning, did the OP lack knowledge in a specific field? Did they just not know enough to know the right question even existed? Or lacked the context to form a coherent question. How much of the back story does an OP have to relate us to justify making a question appropriate for the stack? Yes there is a sandbox... I've tried that myself too. Only to be peppered with reasons of why I shouldn't ask the question. No effort to probe and tease out a good question that would satisfy my goal.

I am sorry, I sincerely am. I'm tired. I come here to escape and learn. Mostly to learn. Most do I think. And the ones who my thoughts are in conflict the most on this, are among the most intelligent knowledgeable well spoken individuals and I actively seek out their post to read for the enjoyment of it on this site.

I've done my best in interactions not to be inflammatory. But when we can't have questions because they are too real world when literally Every world building question in viewed from the real world. Or to grasp a concept in our imagined world we need to find a real world lense to view it though. Yes there is no reason for this stack to exist.