Why my UFO question has been closed and removed?

Question

My question: I've found UFO on Google Maps, what is it? has been closed as off-topic.

It seems there are lot of questions about UFO here, like:

• Is this a genuine UFO sighting or a hoax? (which is quite bad quality, it points to the external link and it looks like some lens flare on image from unknown source and it's still on-topic)
• and 2 more

My question is based on reliable source which are Google Maps raw images and it get closed.

Why is that?

I thought this is the right site to ask about UFO as I am curious about this unidentified flying object.

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Since it was removed, here is the copy of it (for the reference):

Here is the link to the Google Maps.

And here is link to the raw image.

Posting a copy just in case:

• screenshot

  

• raw image

  

It's actually very similar in shape to the UFO which has been found on leaked set of slides by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

![A set of slides showing UFOs have been found amongst the mass of documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.]6

I don't think it looks like a weather balloon, a bird or lens flare. Could it be some temporary glitch of the camera?

Does its blurriness can indicate the object is in the move (as it's not on the other frames)? Which at the same exclude some dirt participles on the camera lens.

Therefore, does it proof that "flying saucers" did indeed exist?

If not, what is it then?

Answer 1

Skeptics.SE has a rather unusual set of rules for what makes a question on-topic. Rather than limiting questions to "photography" or "software development" or some other specific domain, we take questions on pretty much any topic. However, the questions we take are still limited. They need to be "notable claims" - that is some sort of statement that someone has made that many people believe.

We then look for evidence that supports or refutes that claim.

If Oprah said "This shape in this photograph is an alien spacecraft from Mars" (we accept that someone popular saying it is a good proxy for many people believing it), or if there was some popular meme on Facebook that said "This shape is a new secret ISIS fighter-jet" we would try to find evidence for or against those claims.

On the other hand, if a random user posts here to say "I think it is a extra-dimensional frog creature", we don't bother with it - it is isn't notable enough to bother debunking.

Your question was an open-ended "What is it?", which isn't a claim and isn't notable.

Furthermore, it is unlikely to get a definitive answer. Any answers it does get are likely to be speculative: It might be a JPEG artifact. It might be an artifact from stitching photos together. It might be something hanging from the wire. It might be a bug that landed on the lens. (It might be an alien spacecraft from Mars, ISIS fighter jet or extradimensional frog creature; how could you ever prove it wasn't?)

To be fair, maybe someone could prove that the moment the Google car was driving past, someone was flying a remote control aircraft at that spot, and that is what was captured, but that seems unlikely.