As many will know, every now and again, I go on the hunt through the Garbage Valley and look to see if there are any question gems out there which may need a little nudging. If I can answer them I do.
Along with the usual issues with the old unanswered questions (which can demotivate you after a while of carrying out the task of some Garbage Valley clean-up) there is another pattern I may be seeing, maybe it is not there at all. Hence, this question.
Let's look at Does a baby go for the most hard-to-get out of two presented objects? as an example. In essence it could be seen as a reference-request question, therefore the tag could be added to it and it would be bumped to the top of the active queue for people to review and answer if they can.
I feel though that the tag is to be used with caution because, as @Josh pointed out in Do we need the "reference request" tag?.
the tag is being misused and we should remove it from questions unless they are looking for a specific article.
If you look at the meta-description for the tag, you see that the tag is for
questions where the author is looking for a specific article/survey/book on a given statement/conclusion.
Does a baby go for the most hard-to-get out of two presented objects? is not looking for a specific article/survey/book per se. To me, they have a hypothesis which they have outlined, and they are giving it to us to look for scientific research on their behalf. Research which may not even exist in the first place.
The weighting factor could, and probably should be, the chance it will be answered. If that chance is low, and the odds are against it due to quality reasons - close it.
So, I have voted this question for closure for now. If there is strong reason to consider it to be a reference-request question, I may retract it.
What would be the consensus on the idea of tagging all questions of this type as reference-request? Should they really be closed under the "not framed in psychology or neuroscience" close vote reason due to lack of required prior research?
