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IMSoP told me:

Other than "let's fact check every one of Donald Trump's tweets" (a fun game, but not the purpose of this site) what exactly are we being skeptical about?

I checked: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/help/behavior but that doesn't seem to say anything like that. I understand that asking such questions are on-topic but should we refrain from asking to many questions about a important figure just to have fun? Does that go against the purpose of this site?

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    please only use meta for questions that benefit the site as a whole, not to extend a discussion in the comments on a question.
    – Sklivvz
    Dec 31, 2016 at 12:06
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    @Sklivvz I think there is the potential to reword this to a more general discussion, if it's not a duplicate: something like "Is fact-checking Donald Trump's tweets a good use of this site?" We have a lot of claims sourced to Trump, and no reason to suppose they'll stop, so establishing a guideline that we can refer to and avoid rehashing discussion on be questions weld be useful, IMO.
    – IMSoP
    Dec 31, 2016 at 12:27
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    @IMSoP we already have that question in meta
    – Sklivvz
    Dec 31, 2016 at 15:14
  • @Sklivvz Right, I did say "if not a duplicate"; I was accessing on mobile, so search is a bit awkward. Perhaps worth linking to that here and/or on the original comment thread if you can find it.
    – IMSoP
    Jan 1, 2017 at 18:58

2 Answers 2

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The point of a question on StackExchange is to find out whether or not a claim is true. That means that controversy around whether or not it's true.

You shouldn't simply take all tweets of Donald and post them to this website but if there's a tweet where you are sincerely uncertain whether or not it's true, that tweet has a place.

In this case do you have sincere doubt that this is the highest value of the index in the last 15 years?

On is your doubt about whether certain conclusions can be drawn from the index being at a certain value?

You don't specify this but simply ask "Is this true". It's generally helpful to be more precise about what you doubt.

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    Yes, sincerity is key here.
    – Sklivvz
    Dec 31, 2016 at 12:05
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To better summarise my view (which is just an opinion), the fact that Trump said something does not make it automatically off-topic, but it doesn't make it automatically on-topic, either.

A mission to fact check everything he tweets would include such challenges as "Trump says today is Saturday: True!" which would clearly not be an interesting topic for this site. There must therefore be some additional impetus to check something other than "Donald Trump said it, and I don't trust him".

The particular question referenced seems to me a rather trivially checked claim; the answer doesn't really require skeptical research, just a quick fact check by looking up the organisation reference, and finding their Press Release.

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