I have grown weary of questions of the form, "Is X legal?", when the question offers no hint as to why X would be illegal, or even why one would expect that there is any law dealing with X. To paraphrase some recent examples:

• Is off-shore banking always illegal?
• Is it legal to not earn a high school diploma?
• Is it legal for a print shop to set their prices based on the content they're printing?

In these cases, even when prompted, the asker did not offer any context or color to make the question amenable to a good answer.

So far these questions have often been closed as "too broad" or "unclear what you're asking." Which are both true. Except that IXL questions (as I propose we call them) are especially pernicious cases of these problems. Frankly, any four-year-old could come up with a hundred such low-quality, broad, IXL questions before naptime.

In many cases it is possible to write a good question around an IXL query. It is also possible to write a good answer to a bad IXL question, as suggested in the answers to http://meta.law.stackexchange.com/questions/345/how-should-we-answer-is-this-legal: I applaud users with such patience and dedication. And maybe I'm the only one who finds these to be problematic. (If you don't mind IXLs please convey that fact by downvoting this question!)

If you think these merit a canonical response or special close reason, please write one in an answer.

I have grown weary of questions of the form, "Is X legal?", when the question offers no hint as to why X would be illegal, or even why one would expect that there is any law dealing with X. To paraphrase some recent examples:

• Is off-shore banking always illegal?
• Is it legal to not earn a high school diploma?
• Is it legal for a print shop to set their prices based on the content they're printing?

In these cases, even when prompted, the asker did not offer any context or color to make the question amenable to a good answer.

So far these questions have often been closed as "too broad" or "unclear what you're asking." Which are both true. Except that IXL questions (as I propose we call them) are especially pernicious cases of these problems. Frankly, any four-year-old could come up with a hundred such low-quality, broad, IXL questions before naptime.

In many cases it is possible to write a good question around an IXL query. It is also possible to write a good answer to a bad IXL question, as suggested in the answers to How should we answer "Is this legal?": I applaud users with such patience and dedication. And maybe I'm the only one who finds these to be problematic. (If you don't mind IXLs please convey that fact by downvoting this question!)

If you think these merit a canonical response or special close reason, please write one in an answer.

I have grown weary of questions of the form, "Is X legal?", when the question offers no hint as to why X would be illegal, or even why one would expect that there is any law dealing with X. To paraphrase some recent examples:

• Is off-shore banking always illegal?
• Is it legal to not earn a high school diploma?
• Is it legal for a print shop to set their prices based on the content they're printing?

In these cases, even when prompted, the asker did not offer any context or color to make the question amenable to a good answer.

So far these questions have often been closed as "too broad" or "unclear what you're asking." Which are both true. Except that IXL questions (as I propose we call them) are especially pernicious cases of these problems. Frankly, any four-year-old could come up with a hundred such low-quality, broad, IXL questions before naptime.

In many cases it is possible to write a good question around an IXL query. It is also possible to write a good answer to a bad IXL question, as suggested in the answers to http://meta.law.stackexchange.com/questions/345/how-should-we-answer-is-this-legal

  I applaud users with such patience and dedication. And maybe I'm the only one who finds these to be problematic. If you don't mind IXLs please convey that fact by downvoting this question.

If you think these merit a canonical response or special close reason, please write one in an answer.

I have grown weary of questions of the form, "Is X legal?", when the question offers no hint as to why X would be illegal, or even why one would expect that there is any law dealing with X. To paraphrase some recent examples:

• Is off-shore banking always illegal?
• Is it legal to not earn a high school diploma?
• Is it legal for a print shop to set their prices based on the content they're printing?

In these cases, even when prompted, the asker did not offer any context or color to make the question amenable to a good answer.

So far these questions have often been closed as "too broad" or "unclear what you're asking." Which are both true. Except that IXL questions (as I propose we call them) are especially pernicious cases of these problems. Frankly, any four-year-old could come up with a hundred such low-quality, broad, IXL questions before naptime.

In many cases it is possible to write a good question around an IXL query. It is also possible to write a good answer to a bad IXL question, as suggested in the answers to http://meta.law.stackexchange.com/questions/345/how-should-we-answer-is-this-legal: I applaud users with such patience and dedication. And maybe I'm the only one who finds these to be problematic. (If you don't mind IXLs please convey that fact by downvoting this question!)

If you think these merit a canonical response or special close reason, please write one in an answer.