31
votes
Accepted
Policy Clarification: Asking about commercial or third-party worlds
This site is for questions about building worlds, not questions about how others' worlds work. Now very few ideas are completely original, so your world might use elements from, or derived from, ...
- 19.2k
27
votes
Should we think long and hard about [sex]?
Same Answer, Different Tag
My answer for this tag is basically the same as for the other tag: sex is simply part life and part of culture (even more so than torture). Every life form that reproduces ...
- 36.7k
24
votes
End of beta soon?
Sadly, the text on Area 51 is woefully out of date on this point. The shortest time to graduation for any SE 2.0 site (that is, all but the few oldest) was six months and that was a while ago. On ...
- 19.2k
18
votes
Accepted
End of beta soon?
As Monica has already pointed out, the information on Area 51 is woefully out of date. (Great phrasing, so I'm borrowing it.)
When could we hope to see this site released?
The site is already ...
- 28.6k
16
votes
Accepted
Do questions HAVE to be for some greater cause?
Welcome to the site,
No, there is no hard and fast requirement that you be in the midst of building your own world to participate. If you have an area in which you are knowledgeable and can help ...
- 32.5k
16
votes
Accepted
Back It Up! policies
Back It Up! can mean real-world history or physics or linguistics
These are valuable fields that can give a fictional world a sense of realism, or at least credibility and verisimilitude. Answers that ...
- 230
16
votes
Policy Clarification: Asking about commercial or third-party worlds
I think I need to challenge the entire premise of this question.
I don't care if your question is about Star Wars, Star Trek, The Forgotten Realms, or something completely out of your imagination.
I ...
- 76k
15
votes
Accepted
Are questions based on movies okay?
I don't see any reason why a question based on a movie couldn't be on topic. In fact, I'm fairly certain that we have plenty of those, if for no other reason then because someone saw something they ...
- 28.6k
14
votes
Scores and synonyms
Yeah, the synonym-suggestion interface really doesn't work well on most sites. First, there's the problem you brought up. Second and possibly more important, even if you do manage to suggest a ...
- 19.2k
13
votes
Accepted
Seeking community consensus about "Why would X lead to Y?" questions
I've been seeing a lot of those too. I'm not sure what to do with them. They remind me a lot of the questions we see on physics like "Why do photons have wavelengths?" The only true answer to these ...
- 129k
13
votes
What pictures do we like and dislike in a post?
I think the general rule should be to avoid gratuitous or unnecessary images. Does the image really add something relevant or is it just noise?
If the image is just noise feel free to edit it out ...
- 10.5k
12
votes
Accepted
When and how to challenge the back story?
My opinion on this event is fairly simple and straightforward:
I think we too often rely on Science As We Know It to be the end-all be-all of measures by which we view, critique, understand, and ...
- 36.7k
11
votes
Does the Stack wish to allow questions concerning the profession of worldbuilding?
Obviously
Yes, I'd argue that this is a valid type of question here as it touches on methods and process of worldbuilding. The job of the geopoet is, after all, the monetary extension of the artistic ...
- 36.7k
11
votes
Is it Fair to Encourage People to NOT Answer Questions that Need to be Closed?
As a user of this site, and as a moderator, I've seen a number of questions that received close votes for being 'bad', that to me as a subject matter expert in certain areas were eminently reasonable ...
Monty WildMod
- 45.4k
10
votes
Purposeful offensive-contents in a question
We have had questions that deal with sensitive topics -- rape, torture, genocide, and more. The topics aren't inherently offensive (though they require delicate handling), but the way a question is ...
- 19.2k
10
votes
Yes, questions can be Too Localized. But usually they are at far greater risk of being Too Broad
This is a very good point. Most of the questions I've seen so far are just that. Questions instead of problems. Including those problems could help narrow many of those "too broad" questions down to "...
- 607
10
votes
Taking some issues
It is harder to write good questions about culture, politics, and other qualitative issues, but there are plenty of them on WB. As someone who has written 3 questions and seen two of them closed for ...
10
votes
A proposal to establish policy regarding the torture and execution tags
I am UNANIMOUS in offering a raspberry to anyone from Corporate who tries to lord their authority over any community whose foundation is free interchange of ideas & speech within the limitations ...
- 36.7k
9
votes
Accepted
Systems of measurement
I agree that this kind of thing is really annoying (though I've probably been guilty of it myself in the past). SI units are the most common ones in science, and given that most of the familiar ...
HDE 226868Mod
- 97.3k
9
votes
When and how to challenge the back story?
You've put together a complex story, you're proud of it, you've come here requesting help on Part A. Someone tears apart your story on Part B. The downsides of this are:
It can be very demotivational....
- 43.3k
9
votes
Real Life cannot be an overriding limitation on any question unless specifically requested
If the question doesn't specify the expected direction of answer, it's reasonable to infer from what information there is.
The Sea of Japan question doesn't specify any level of future tech, alternate ...
- 21.7k
9
votes
Should we think long and hard about [sex]?
As the person who asked the question I thought it might be worth putting in my two cents on the whole issue.
In general, I tried to keep the question as clinical as possible and about as erotic as a ...
- 13.3k
8
votes
Should we take a meta consensus as site policy
It depends, and it's necessarily vague.
Suppose a site's community, via meta, voted overwhelmingly to, say, outlaw question closure. That would be interesting, but it wouldn't change anything. At ...
- 19.2k
8
votes
Purposeful offensive-contents in a question
offensive contents that have a meaningful purpose in a question
I think the key to this lies in your definition of "meaningful purpose"...
Yes, some topics are inherently more controversial. ...
- 10.5k
8
votes
Policy Clarification: Asking about commercial or third-party worlds
As long as the answer does not require you to provide information from cannon to be correct, it is fine. Also, if the question requires you to understand cannon for context, it should be something ...
- 63.5k
8
votes
Taking some issues
To be frank about it, yes. There are a certain cohort of people on this site that have their heads so far up their tails they're at risk of recursion. Yes, there are some generally self-righteous ...
- 53.8k
8
votes
A proposal to establish policy regarding the torture and execution tags
I find the wording of the following statement self contradictory
We will answer questions involving the physiological aspects of torture and execution with one, overriding limitation: we will not ...
L.DutchMod
- 236k
8
votes
Policy proposal: Questions about names and the process of deriving names are off-topic
Three Points to Consider!
First, invented languages are actually, and in fact prominently on topic here in Worldbuilding! What Topics can I ask about here lists languages as a valid topic.
I suspect ...
- 36.7k
7
votes
Is Worldbuilding a What if Site - a followup
First, we are not to a consensus yet (at least not so far as I have seen). We are looking through the case study threads to figure out where the lines are. I will agree that there seems to be a ...
- 32.5k
7
votes
Policy Recommendation: We recommend that users wait 24-48 hours before selecting a best answer
I’d edit that down:
Consider waiting 24-48 hours before selecting the best answer to allow our world-spanning community a chance to contribute.
Short and to the point. Doesn’t judge those who ...
- 3,610
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible