FAQ: Must all questions be notable?

Question

One of the key themes of Stack Exchange right from the start has been that you can't have a site about everything. Each SE site has a topic, users who are devoted to that topic, and who will ruthlessly exclude questions that aren't on that topic. This can be a bit confusing at times, especially to new users, but the value of a focused community that knows its specialty and works to emphasize it outweighs this...

In the League of Justice, each hero combines forces to make something greater than the whole — without sacrificing their original identity. The power of the League is self-evident and testament to the individual strength of each member.

Stack Overflow Blog: Why Can’t You Have Just One Site?

Skeptics is a bit of an odd duck in this, since its topic isn't quite as obvious as, say, Cooking or Gardening. This site isn't about medicine, or history, or nutrition, although questions on all of those topics can be on-topic... It's not even about Skepticism!

Skeptics is about applying skepticism — it's for researching the evidence behind the claims you hear or read. It is not for philosophical discussions about skepticism itself.

That said, it does have a topic, a set of questions that are on-topic and a much larger set that aren't - just like every other SE site. The key is in that first paragraph from the FAQ I just quoted: it's about claims heard or read.

It's tempting to let this scope just keep expanding until it does cover everything... Now, I don't pretend to know every claim ever said or written. But I've spent a lot of time engaged in idle speculation, and I know what that looks like:

• "My co-workers think it'd be great if..."
• "Seems to me that..."
• "I just made up a story saying..."

This is dangerous. With no burden of proof on the asker that someone else believes the claim they're asking you to fact-check, you risk losing your specialty... And eventually, your experts. D'ya think Superman would keep showing up for the League of Justice if folks were bugging him every time they needed furniture moved or a jar opened?

Now, that doesn't mean every single claim has to be backed by a New York Times article making it. You could probably even let "It's commonly said..." claims slide, if the claim is actually common knowledge. But if there's any doubt - if one person shows up, searches for evidence that the claim is notable, and then disputes the claim (leaves a comment, or flags for moderator attention) - then it's the responsibility of the asker (or your friendly neighborhood editor) to dig up a real, verifiable source. After all, if it's actually common knowledge, then there should be some reference to it out there...

Please, don't let this site become SE Answers, the dumping ground for idle curiosity and pointless speculation. Don't cripple your superhero: cite, flag, or close, and let your experts focus on real claims.

Answer 1

I would suggest our policy is similar in principle to Wikipedia: Skeptics.SE is about addressing notable claims.

References in questions are unlike references in answers:

References in answers are used to provide evidence that a claim being made in the answer is correct. We expect the sources have a level of scientific validity.

References in questions are used to provide evidence that a claim is notable. We don't expect the sources to be scientifically valid, but to demonstrate either a lot of people have heard of the claim, or that some notable person(s) make it.

Answer 2

I believe that, being a skeptics site for the people, not for top-notch scientists, everyone should be allowed to have an inquiring mind and a skeptical attitude and manifest it in here through a question. Restricting this based on how notable a claim one makes will no doubt discourage people from asking obscure, undiscovered, or too localized things that may prove quite valuable for the site, as they would gather people that know more about the topic than most of us.

Questions with no context demand answers that supply different contexts with their different particularities. I believe that a passionate skeptic is a curious fellow, who wouldn't mind doing some research of his own, not relying on the OP to have done this. Absurd claims would quickly turn out no results upon trying to research them, so there is no real danger here of wasting vast amounts of time for nothing.

Besides that, what's the difference if I claim some absurd theory and ask about it here, or I find someone else on the internet that makes some absurd statements, promotes them heavily and I reference my question with a copious amount of links? The nature of the claim is the same: bullsit will remain bullsit, no matter how referenced or notable it is, good, interesting facts with curious outcomes will still be interesting to research and discuss, even when not referenced. The rest, is just the digital equivalent of bureaucracy.

[Taken from my answer for this question]

Answer 3

When I grew up I encountered a lot of what you may call "childhood myths and mysteries".

Some of them were simply wrong, because they were outright lies told by adults or because they were a result of our imagination. (Sorry, kids, there is no Santa Claus...) We either found out about the lie, were told about it or the idea became so "unplausible" to the adult mind, that we didn't think about it any more.

On the other hand, some of those mysteries we later found out to be true or at least highly plausible. I remember my grandfather always wanting beer from brown bottles - not green ones because - as he said - it tasted better. I didn't drink beer back then and don't do now, but I never understood why this should be true - and I wouldn't have found out unless some people actually researched this: Brown bottles protect their contents better from ultraviolet radiation which in turn may influence taste. (Since taste is highly subjective, I suppose this question would be off topic, and I agree with that.)

Finally, there are some things that seem to have been forgotten. Can you grow Garden cress on a sheep? This claim was made by a friend of mine, recently, and I remember, that we talked about this during our childhood, too. Too bad we didn't have internet back then to discuss this topic online. (It might have given me a valid answer or at least a "notable claim".) This stuff would grow on sheep fur once it's separated from the animal so why not on a live animal? Sure it would be interesting and fun to simply try, but besides the need for a sheep and irrigation, I wouldn't be sure if this doesn't hurt the animal in any way.

I do not oppose the "notable claim" requirement in general. I would suggest some more "flexibility" when it comes to enforcing it. Does it really serve the community if a specific question is put on hold within minutes? Is it perhaps better to at least have the option to see if the question is voted down (or up) or maybe even answered?

I'm German and one of the stereotypes associated with us is that we love obeying rules simply "because they exist". If the traffic lights show red, we wait. Period. We do so at 2 a.m., no other cars in sight and with our wife in labour on the back seat. Of course that's an exaggeration, but the attitude is out there and personally, I don't like it.

Among sane and "cooperative" adults - which I think we all are - it should always be an option not to enforce a certain rule - no more, no less...

Personal opinion... Feel free to vote it down if you don't agree. One of the first things I learned on SE is not to take down votes personally. ;-)