How to ask a question about alleged widespread SRA such that everyone is happy? [closed]

Question

I asked this question. Originally the question was intended to be only about Ted Gunderson's claim, and as such it was very short and I actually received several upvotes at the beggining. Unfortunately, the next day @Oddthinking closed the question right away as off-topic because no evidence was provided that the claim is still widely believed today. In an attempt to save the question, I provided the best evidence I could think of at the moment to prove that the claim is still widely believed, but as an unintended collateral effect of doing so the question is now perceived as too broad. Any ideas on how to reformulate the question in a way that makes everyone happy?

Answer 1

Currently, you are asking other users to watch hours and hours of videos to find claims that you may or may not be asking about. If you strip your question down to a couple of the most popular/notable videos or articles, and quote the actual claim from those videos/articles that you want answered, then the question should be on-topic.

For example, you said that you originally asked about Ted Gunderson's claims, but the original version of your question did not quote any claims by Ted Gunderson. You quoted Wikipedia's summary of the things Ted Gunderson claimed, and offered links to three hours of videos on YouTube. Do those videos contains claims from Gunderson himself? If so, do those videos only contain Gunderson's claims, or do other users need to watch all three hours and try to guess which claims you're asking about? After your edits you included dozens of more videos, are they all only about Gunderson's claims, or do they include other claims that users have to sift through?

Basically, to be on-topic you just need to ask about explicit, concise claim(s). If you were to revert your question back to a focus on just Ted Gunderson's claims (or claims by any other notable person), explicitly say what those claims are (through quotes and video timestamps), and demonstrate that those claims are widely believed today (such as quoting recent, popular videos or notable people repeating/referencing Gunderson's claims), then that should salvage the question into something that is on-topic here.

I can't speak for all of the downvoters or close-votes, but at the very least doing the above should remove "Need details or clarity" and "Needs more focus" as reasons to close the question.