Questions tagged [discussion]

The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.

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Are frame challenges in comments disallowed, and if so by what policy, and can this be more clearly communicated to users?

(I am setting this up as a separate question to focus on this issue alone, without being mixed with other stuff.) It has recently come to my attention that at least some moderators consider frame ...
causative's user avatar
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-1 votes
2 answers
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Problematic moderation actions

On this question What would the effects of a space based laser weapon system capable of tracking and destroying any projectile posing a threat to human life? there were a series of what I'd consider ...
causative's user avatar
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-1 votes
2 answers
129 views

Can we include a "spherical-cow" tag?

I recently added a spherical-cow tag to the list of available tags, and applied it to an excellent candidate, but it was removed. You could call this a "why" or "why not" question, ...
Robert Rapplean's user avatar
4 votes
6 answers
404 views

We've suddenly begun beating the snot out of new(ish) users - and that's saying something coming from me

Two things have changed recently. A lot of new users have begun using the site. Not surprisingly, they're not seriously reading the tour or the Help Center. And none of them save one are showing up ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
1 vote
1 answer
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How to limit the range of answers to questions which are not technically considered opinion based?

TLDR; Specifically this is about the last mile problem, not about opinion basis. Though I'll grant that opinion basis is related and perhaps implicit. Note: I may be incorrect in my interpretation of ...
Nolo's user avatar
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6 votes
3 answers
112 views

Merge Middle-Ages and Medieval tags

middle-ages and medieval are exactly synonymous. They are two different names for the time period and culture of Europe between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. I suggest keeping Medieval as it ...
Nosajimiki's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
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Should we have a [role] tag?

There are a lot of questions asking after a potential role for a certain creature or device. Since other tags will narrow down potential use (which is nevertheless usually beneficial to prevent ...
Joachim's user avatar
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8 votes
5 answers
218 views

What are the limits of open-endedness, hypotheticality, and encouragement of "discussion-based or extremely long answers", are they too subjective?

Per the tour on the main stack, querents should not ask "Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer". Also, per the help center, querents should ...
Fictotum's user avatar
  • 319
7 votes
2 answers
156 views

Will we have a Holiday Bountapalooza this year?

The holiday bountapolooza is (was... shall be again...) an invitation to search for and place bounties on deserving questions and/or answers. It not only helps get people in the mood to post bounties ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
0 votes
2 answers
146 views

What do you think about a fake bounty? (this isn't exactly click-bait...)

I would like to draw attention to one and, eventually, more questions that I've posted that have community wiki answers. The Bounty system isn't really designed for that, but it's the most obvious way ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
4 votes
1 answer
166 views

Why do people link the word "edit" in their comments?

Open question. I'm curious why some people make the word "edit" in their comments a hyperlink to the edit action. Particularly why they do when responding to users who are not exactly new to ...
KeizerHarm's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
46 views

Restore space-exploration as a separate tag from space-travel

I have been working on a story for some time similar to Andy Weir’s Hail Mary Pass that involves deep space observation in search of a probe target and as very often happens I have to use three of my ...
Vogon Poet's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
94 views

Restore the aerodynamics tag as distinct from flight

The overlap between aerodynamics and flight is far too small to link these categories as synonyms. Only a small subset of things which fly (in fictional worlds) rely on a subset of aerodynamic ...
Vogon Poet's user avatar
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5 votes
3 answers
246 views

Do we need to attribute the work of others if we include it in our posts?

I've noticed that some users on Worldbuilding Stack Exchange include images and text in their posts, either questions or answers, that are sourced from elsewhere and are not their own work. As a ...
Monty Wild's user avatar
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10 votes
2 answers
266 views

Why, exactly, was Robert's answer deleted?

Regarding this answer, which I'll duplicate here in the case of people who can visit Meta but can't see deleted content. There is a significant debate about this going on in the scifi community. We ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
2 votes
1 answer
89 views

(Not so?) Suspicious Deletion of Suspicious AI Generated Responses

Regarding this question, in light of this policy. I think we can all agree in principle that AI generated text has no real place here in Worldbuilding, with the possible exception of queries about AI ...
elemtilas's user avatar
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11 votes
0 answers
289 views

Chat is back! The Factory Floor is once again open for business

Stack Exchange has historically distinguished itself from forums by following a very matter-of-fact philosophy: questions, answers, comments, and no chit-chat. While this helps folks get answers to ...
HDE 226868's user avatar
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4 votes
3 answers
206 views

Advice: real facts vs. worldbuilding rules

There is a LOT of information in the world and unlike the days of yore, it's available instantly. Most of that information is good. Some of it is bad. Some of it is really bad. But even if we only ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
0 votes
3 answers
238 views

Policy Proposal: We do not engineer technologies

We are receiving questions asking for us to factually invent an idea or technology with increasing frequency. The questions are usually asked by people with insufficient education but a strong desire ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
3 votes
1 answer
84 views

Trying to understand why a relevant post with a peer-reviewed paper directly linked to was considered "low quality"

The structure of this website makes it every difficult to speak to people on the other side of a set of moderation buttons, leading to confusion and infuriation. This is one such situation where peer-...
cthon's user avatar
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1 vote
3 answers
77 views

Regarding tags related to nuclear phenomena

I noticed that we have both the strong-force and weak-force tags, both of which I feel should be absorbed by the nuclear tag. I also noticed we have both the radioactivity and radiation tags. In this ...
M S's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
70 views

Regarding the tag info for the 'aliens' tag

The tag info for the aliens tag states: For questions about a different and uncharacteristic species or object that has come to the world from another world. NOT for questions about extraterrestrials ...
M S's user avatar
  • 1,912
3 votes
7 answers
328 views

Should the hard-science tag be retired?

It is evident that many of the people who use it either don't read the guidance, or are very confused about the scientific accuracy of a lot of popular media. I suspect they think they know what "...
John Dallman's user avatar
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7 votes
4 answers
286 views

How should we deal with "vexatious questions?"

I define "vexatious questions"1 as a series of questions from the same user that are minor iterations on a theme or idea. The first question in the series contributed to worldbuilding. The ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
1 vote
2 answers
99 views

Found a potential answer to my own question, but didn't get feedback on it. How do I fix that?

A few days after I posted this question, I hitting upon this potential answer to it and posted it to get feedback on it, but the only response to it was strictly to tell me how to use superscripts (I ...
MarqFJA87's user avatar
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11 votes
3 answers
260 views

Case Study: The Consequence of Inadequate Comments

UPDATE: Amber's original question has been undeleted and the new question closed as a duplicate. It looks like that new question has since been deleted (honestly, it didn't need to be this complicated....
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
-2 votes
3 answers
204 views

Question closed despite lack of legitimate complaints

I believe that one (or perhaps several) of the votes toward closing my most recent question constitute an abuse of voting privileges rather than having legitimate issues with the question. Certainly, ...
M S's user avatar
  • 1,912
-2 votes
4 answers
163 views

I think my question on the 1/72 scale nuke should be opened and was closed for blatantly wrong reasons

I asked about how much damage/the area of effect of a 1/72 cockroach nuke a week or so ago. I got several answers, but It would have been preferable if it stayed open. Here is the link: How big would ...
Conan Highwoods's user avatar
7 votes
3 answers
293 views

Should we burn the video-games tag?

A recent question asking for advice about what the boss in their video game should be tagged their question video-games. The tag has no summary and no wiki. The first question tagged with the tag was ...
JBH's user avatar
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0 votes
0 answers
69 views

What should we do about tag wiki excerpts?

Recently, I've been going around and creating tag wiki excerpts. At first, I was wondering about the usefulness of such work-but after a few accepts, it seemed like a good idea. After a few (not-so) ...
The Commander's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
72 views

Advice: Prohibiting a branch of science in my world

A recent question asked what weapons a society would use if magic (specifically a mage) could stop the ignition of gunpowder and similar explosives. It was a different spin on a popular type of ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
2 votes
5 answers
196 views

What proof would we accept that an otherwise 3rd-party world belongs to a Stack Exchange user?

Relevant post: How much and how powerful would a "phlebotinium" bomb launched from orbit be to create an artificial sea? A new user, @JustKherty, has posted a question about a publicly ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
0 votes
1 answer
68 views

Edit rejected for deviating from the original intent of a post

I proposed a series of minor edits on this question earlier today; and as the title says, was rejected for deviating from the author's intent. I have a vague idea of which portions of my edit probably ...
The Commander's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
245 views

Answer deleted. Explanation is warranted

The question: How would a primitive people recharge energy weapons in a hard science fiction setting? Pretty straight-foward. Author is asking how a primitive society could recharge energy weapons, ...
JamieB's user avatar
  • 7,652
-8 votes
6 answers
167 views

Why does this platform accept questions about slavery?

I am disgusted by the way users have been asking disgusting questions about slavery. Something that should not be considered as a means or concept of any monstrous ideas as it has been explored here! ...
Edvaldo Filho's user avatar
-1 votes
3 answers
68 views

Should the Xenobiology tag automatically imply science-based or hard-science?

In a comment to a recent question, @Nosajimiki made a good point. The OP had not tagged the question hard-science or science-based, so I chastised other respondents for taking a hard-line Real World ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
-5 votes
3 answers
116 views

Is this heuristic for "too story based" functional?

I've been contemplating the things that make us want to close questions. On many questions, I vacillate between something being opinion based or story based or too vague, and this is an attempt to ...
Robert Rapplean's user avatar
29 votes
0 answers
640 views

Announcement: AI generated content banned on Worldbuilding

Community discussion has been taking place on WB Meta concerning our position on AI generated content: Should we ban posts using ChatGPT or similar software? Because of the outcome of the discussion ...
L.Dutch's user avatar
  • 277k
4 votes
1 answer
86 views

Change Proposal for Anatomically Correct Series Criteria

The full and official verbiage defining how the Anatomically Correct tag should be used can be found here: Anatomically Correct Series. But there are some aspects of it that I think deserve some minor ...
Nosajimiki's user avatar
  • 87.8k
1 vote
1 answer
75 views

Where would asking for tip and tricks on worldbuilding go?

I think the question is pretty self-explanatory, so where can I ask more general world-building questions, such as style or general how to build a world kind of questions?
redfrogcrab's user avatar
  • 1,336
5 votes
0 answers
60 views

2022: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year. As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
JNat's user avatar
  • 101
4 votes
5 answers
271 views

Should we try to create Storybuilding.SE?

Worldbuilding.SE legend has it that the idea of Storybuilding.SE was once discussed, but at the time the rules of Stack Exchange were so rigid that such a Stack could never succeed or even graduate ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
2 votes
1 answer
116 views

What are some 'assets' you re-use across different worldbuilding projects?

I once carefully worldbuilt a computer system, how it would have a distributed filesystem with redundant backups, a public key system for identity, etc. etc. Then when I was building the next world, I ...
wokopa's user avatar
  • 4,657
-1 votes
2 answers
161 views

Why does opinion based VTC exist?

-Vote to close question because it's ''opinion based'' or -Don't answer with opinions. There's two options, but option 1 has no reason to exist
user avatar
2 votes
5 answers
617 views

Considered harmful: questions where the asker expects us to figure out a scientific explanation or alternative for their handwavium

Latest offender: Need counters for a near perfect Anti Thermal and Kinetic armor system in a near future setting Another example: Could alien organisms evolve to utilize Thermoelectric cooling(the ...
Ian Kemp's user avatar
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0 votes
2 answers
102 views

Is an edit to the three Science tag wikis warranted?

A recent question posited a fantastic condition then used the science-based tag. In essense, the author wanted a science-based solution to a problem that wasn't science-based in the first place. We've ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
4 votes
2 answers
74 views

Is it appropriate to ask a question without a product?

Can I post a question if I have no intention of ever including the answer in a book, picture, game or interpretive dance routine? My impression is that those who post answers enjoy the process in and ...
user avatar
-1 votes
1 answer
219 views

A Proposal to End the Love/Hate Relationship with Brainstorming, AKA List questions, Idea-Generation, and Fishing-for-Ideas

Preliminary Information Before I begin, I want to make a clear distinction insofar as I understand the principal purpose of this Stack (the following closely fits the rules as defined in the Tour and ...
JBH's user avatar
  • 117k
0 votes
1 answer
123 views

Are we helping or hurting Worldbuilding with these rules? [duplicate]

What is the difference between this question: If Mars and Venus were habitable, by when would they have been colonized? And this question: How does Santa keep locations updated for all of his gift ...
JamieB's user avatar
  • 7,652
36 votes
13 answers
2k views

Should we ban posts using ChatGPT or similar software?

Recently, the chatbot ChatGPT was released and experienced a surge in popularity. It's reasonably good at mimicking humans, and it has a database of information to draw on. The upshot is that you can ...
HDE 226868's user avatar
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