Do we want to touch the "moon hoax"?

Question

There was recently a question from someone new who came just to ask about the 'obvious moon hoax'. I wouldn't be surprised if this has come up a bunch of other times. @Mark Bailey tried to save the question by doing an extensive edit on it to bring it in the bounds of the reasonable, but there was very little chance the OP would ever have accepted that edit. The fact that the community zapped that question with all their might may have discouraged him from re-posting that question framed as an issue with the public perception of space exploration. I tried to encourage him to do that through some supportive pinging from TildalWave, but he seems to prefer to let it go.

I once answered a question about the appearance of the lunar lander, about how to answer accusations that it looked makeshift and was therefore fake. The question got a lot of traffic and votes.

Now, I understand that that is a double-edged sword. The more traffic you have from the idly curious, and the more they vote on answers, especially when they are likely to not have the technical expertise to evaluate them, the harder it is to maintain quality. All the same, in a perfect world we'd have the tools to manage that traffic without sacrificing quality. In fact, that is the ultimate goal, isn't it?

So what if we seeded a question about how we know the Apollo landings weren't a hoax (though I feel a little icky even saying that)? It could defuse such questions in future by giving us the option of referring them to the other question and then tidying them away as duplicates.

It could perhaps be criticized as too broad. At any rate, do we want to go there?

Edit: Skeptics' handling of the question is here. I found the second answer much more convincing than the first, until I read that one I wasn't too impressed. So we could refer askers there. I imagine such questions will still trickle in and sometimes meet standards.

Answer 1

Too late for "do we want to go there?" We already did. See myth-busting. And the community hath spoken! That said, questions do have to follow our prescribed qualitative requirements and be on-topic. Otherwise, personally, I have no objections. As you can see from linked tag's list, some of those questions became rather popular.

However, the question that you mention began as a long-winded statement with no clear question to answer. It had a hallmark of a question that would solicit prolonged discussion and several close reasons (Unclear what you're asking, Too broad,...) are specifically designed to address that. If we had a Not a real question close reason (which we used to), reviewers would likely opt for that one.

And about the suggested edit, while it was great in comparison, it identified several standalone questions so it could be closed as Too broad, if it ever was approved, since it substantially changed author's intentions, which is another of the prepared suggested edit reject reasons:

clearly conflicts with author's intent

This edit deviates from the original intent of the post. Even edits that must make drastic changes should strive to preserve the goals of the post's owner

There is also another point, one I fear more than any other and was my reject reason for the suggested edit - that OP whose first contribution was that bad that it received 14 down-votes, not a single up-vote, and all five of community review close votes needed to put the question on hold within 10 minutes (!!!), started gaining reputation, and with it site privileges, entirely off the work of others. For OP with no clear intentions, that obviously didn't read even our introduction that each new visitor to the site sees at the top of the page, nor read instructions for asking new questions, that each member asking fist question sees, that's to me a scary thought.

Instead, I would suggest that @MarkBailey, author of the suggested edit, posts new questions identified in his edit as standalone ones, so they can be properly addressed and we settle this hoax moon landing business in as clear and productive way as possible. If Mark doesn't want to post those questions, then I'd encourage those with access to his revision (anyone over 2k site reputation) to do that instead. What better way to teach than by example, huh?

Answer 2

There are several issues at stake here:

1. Highly experienced SEx.SE community members (with first-hand experience) may be fed up with "moon hoax" questions. Encouraging nuts to post more "hoax" drivel may actually drive competent answerers off-site to fora where "hoax" posts aren't tolerated at all.

2. Stack Exchange has a dedicated nut, crankcase, and debunking site - Skeptics SE. I'd rather let Skeptics handle conspiracy theorists than lower quality here at SEx.SE.

3. I don't feel that cheap SuperCollider (tm) (a.k.a. Hot Questions' list) drive-by views and votes are urgently needed. Of course, this is just a personal opinion, yet I have the impression that this community is growing at a healthy sustained pace (hint hint nudge nudge - "when do we graduate?").

Answer 3

I am not an experienced SEx.SE member (ha), but very dedicated conspiracy people can put a lot of 'umpf' into refuting things. Even a long, thorough, balanced response to shut their argument about the moon hoax will result in them finding an iota of error or even a grammatical error in the response, in order to refute the rational argument.

Next thing you know, Space Exploration at Stack Exchange is being used by the conspiracy people as a tool to show 'faulty science', when in fact it is not. Don't feed the trolls; let them form a coherent, reasonable question on Skeptics.

Obviously, this is just my two cents.

Answer 4

Firstly, I would like to point out that there was no moon hoax.

Secondly, I can't think of anything worse than attempting to put up mock questions that purport to be about any hoax. Any real conspiracy theorist out there would spot it a mile off, and use it further "proof" of the conspiracy. Besides who among would want such questions forever to be on our list of questions asked?

So I think let people ask whatever they want provided the question meets our minimum standards. Then treat such questions with respect, explaining carefully and clearly why the answer is as it is. Then the community should vote up the clearest bestest answers.

If any condescension is shown, it completely nullifies the rational explanation and leaves them with a negative impression.