Let's define "a large number of people"

Question

We have a policy that states

The idea here is that once a large number of people are exposed to the claim, it is of general interest to validate the claim and either confirm or refute it.

I have a separate question asking what kind of sources can satisfy "a large number of people". Here I want to ask what is a "large number".

We have one user which has told me in chat,

The term large number isn't defined anywhere and depending on context 50,000 can be small or large

I would like to make our policy clear enough such that 50,000 people being exposed to a claim is always "large enough" to be notable. I would be willing to go down too. But I think we can set an objective floor for "large number" to stop some of the malicious trolling on this site.

Answer 1

Argument for Objectivity

Subjectivity is befuddling, and exclusionary

The site's Code of Conduct says the mission is to "foster collaboration within a safe and welcoming community rooted in kindness, cooperation and mutual respect."

• We don't prepare users for what they're getting into: An ideal new users reads our Help Pages on Asking a Question. This page makes no mention that, topicality aside, questions may otherwise be not-welcome here if they fail an arbitrary "notability" guideline. Lacking this defeats the purpose of the network in providing it. If you click through the only mention of notability on our Help page you find a meta post which has in its answer a link to our policy on notability which says only,

  The idea here is that once a large number of people are exposed to the claim, it is of general interest to validate the claim and either confirm or refute it.

  That I'm here arguing this is because a question was closed which had 60,000 people sign a petition on change.org. This is clear evidence of even the most experienced users not knowing what a "large number of people are exposed to the claim" mean, and experienced moderators arguing that 60,000 people exposed is insufficient under the terms of our policy.

• Even if we did, what we're forcing users into is unwelcoming: We're setting up new users for a conflict when we demand notability and notability can not be known before submission. Even if we told users, regardless of topicality, "all questions may closed if they're deemed unnnotable and there is no defense to this charge" we're only disclosing at that point that we're a fairly unkind community. While we can't fault users regardless, they're like to fault us if they take time to submit a well crafted question that is otherwise on topic, and it fails for a lack of notability.

• None of this required: From my perspective, it's not clear why we want this. Consider this,

  • Are all apples are made of titanium?
  • Are all oranges are made of titanium?

  Why should these two questions have a different criteria for notability? If 5,000 retweets on one substantiates a claim to notability, why would that ever not be sufficient for another? We also don't need to specify a ceiling for notability. For example, it may be such that some claims are less likely to be viewed then others: "Is fluoride more deadly than uranium when injected", is likely to be less trafficked then any claim about a president. But, we can still provide guidance. We can still say "Something is notable if it has gone viral. For our purposes viral is a single post with has 5,000 retweets+favorites, signatures on a petition, or likes on Facebook."

• The effect on mod culture is toxic. Lacking guidance, moderators feel (and I can provide direct evidence for this) that they're not enforcing policy, but instead using a more heavy downvote. This goes against the design of this site: a downvote is to show you dislike the question or answer and requires no justification. A vote-to-close and vote-to-delete is a tool for enforcement of policy. You can downvote a question you feel is too esoteric and otherwise a poor question. It is wrong to use a vote-to-close as a heavier downvote for a more experienced user.

• The effect on the community is toxic. Rules like this are likely to be more enforced against people you do not agree with, dislike, or don't know. This is not the way a community should be run. Subjective rules lead to subjective enforcement which prejudices established people. Take for instance me, I filed a TOS violation report for this rule because this is how I feel it was used. I don't think StackExchange wants to deal with this, but who knows.

• Subjective policy sets up mods to fight. Do you really want to create an environment where mods are voting to close and open questions based on their preference for a definition of "notability"? This shouldn't be a fight on a question; this should be a conversation on meta.

• No mutual respect nor cooperation between mods and users when we tell our users that any submission of a question must be done in ignorance to whether or nor the question is notable, and we tell our mods they can vote-to-close a question for a lack of notability without specifying what is required to make the question notable, we are NOT creating a community that fosters cooperation and mutual respect.