Should we increase the required question length of the quality filter to deal with Holocaust trolling?

Question

A lot of the trolling questions about the Holocaust (currently, I'm of the opinion it's by one person) have very short question bodies:

• Did Soviets build a fake chimney in Poland? : One sentence in body.
• https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/posts/45513/revisions : two sentences
• https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/posts/45217/revisions : three sentences, less than one line long
• https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/posts/43439/revisions : three sentences, only half a line
• https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/posts/42900/revisions : two sentences, only half a line
• https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/posts/42754/revisions : War and Peace! A three line paragraph, plus a single sentence
• https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/posts/39608/revisions : three sentences, one and a half lines
• https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/posts/38322/revisions : four sentences, less than one line

Sampling methodology for above: pending flagged question, link to similar question, plus questions I have helpfully flagged as rude and abusive which are about the holocaust or Jews, until I got bored.

In the two most recent questions, there was no source code text that easily identified it as being about the Holocaust. "Auschwitz" is only visible in the image itself, and "Soviet" and "chimney" don't provide a strong hint that it's about the Holocaust. I think that if we require question bodies to be longer, they're more likely to include a keyword that can be detected by charcoal.

I think that we should change the quality filter to require more text in the question body, but I have some questions about whether it'd be a good idea:

• Is it likely that requiring a longer question body will increase the likelihood of it triggering a keyword for Charcoal?

• Will increasing the length of a question make it more likely to be interpreted as a legitimate, good-faith question? Unfortunately, some users have already treated existing questions as legitimate:

  • Daniel Hicks wrote an answer
  • Jerome Vivieros wrote a helpful comment
  • JRE wrote an answer

• Is increasing the required question body length going to lead to negative consequences for legitimate question askers? (I think not, because if you're a good-faith question asker who has a question that is that short, the software is doing you a favour by encouraging you to provide more detail)

Answer 1

Real Skeptic questions about the Holocaust or Holocaust research should be allowed. Its just another historic event. The magnitude of this historic event should not be an excuse to censor free speech or academic research. However, if those questions are illegal by law or really poor questions that do not fit the standards of this site, then they should be flagged. The same applies to other questions, no matter the content. A question like "did Newton invent gravity?" is a low quality question and should be flagged. Methods like increasing the required question length are a start to combat this. When a person adds sentences like: "I need more characters to post this" then they make it more obvious that this is a troll post and other people are more reluctant to answer.

But what about the law or the terms of service from stackexchange?

At least in Germany you could get into real trouble if you discuss the Holocaust from a Skeptic viewpoint. A German judge/prosecutor could easily make a case against you because a Skeptic question could be valued as downplaying the Holocaust which is also illegal in Germany (and there are more laws they can turn against you: §130, §189, §194 Stgb). Its even illegal for Germans to do this outside of Germany. (BGH, Az. 1 StR 184/00).