Are we too harsh on the so-called "opinion-based" questions?

Question

Let me start from the disclaimer that I understand perfectly well that questions like "what color an invading alien armada spaceships would be" or "what would my superhero decide to do with his life?" are useless and serve purpose to nobody, and fully deserve to be closed under the "opinion based" reason. But then there are many interesting questions that can prove to be useful to anybody that will stumble upon them, even if the answers to these questions aren't founded in facts and logic. They might still solve the problem or offer a solution proposal to the problem that the question outlines.

Yeah Worldbuilding SE is hosted on Stack Exchange, who looks down on "unproven" question that are based on opinion, but Worldbuilding, contrary to the rest of SE, isn't a technical process with easily quantifiable facts and knowledge - it's a creative one. I'd make a hot take and say that for most questions here it is impossible to not be opinion based, and I in fact observed very many highly upvoted answers to questions that were displaying opinion and\or biases of the answering user. Sometimes quite obviously. Yet they were still valuable and useful to consider.

I think, if many of those "opinion-based" question deserved to be closed, it would rather be for a different reason - them being too broad and undefined instead.

Answer 1

Am I allowed to say it?

HELL YES!!!!!!

I've often said in comments as well as in other meta discussions that if we really took the "opinion based" rationale for closure as seriously as is normative elsewhere on Stack Exchange, we'd literally have to VTC 95% or more of all our questions.

By definition we deal in the irrealis. That is, things that don't exist, places that aren't, events that didn't or never will happen. Questions about dragon hide resiliency, far future starship propulsion, Elves mating with Trees and what kind of offspring they'd have.

Almost every question we answer here is, to a very large extent, opinion based. And I do think we are, as a community, a little too quick to VTC opinion based queries that are actually perfectly answerable within an imaginative context. And I concur re the colour choices of starmada admirals for their uniform jackets, or the like! Those are opinion based questions that should ought to be closed, and with good reason. But questions that really have no basis in known reality are equally opinion based, but it's simply the case that these are the kinds of questions we need to be addressing here if we are to follow our own mandate to help people build, devise, improve or otherwise tinker with their fictional worlds and settings.

As a matter of my own practice, when reviewing queries in the VTC queue, I almost never agree with opinion based as a closure rationale. I might wish to close it for a different reason (most usually such questions might lack clarity or focus), though. And that is a different matter for a different discussion!

In comments, one person wrote that these kinds of questions (opinion based) "do not belong here". I wonder, since this must by definition include the majority of all questions asked in this forum, where else would they belong?

I hold that to say "those questions do not belong here" is an ill conceived opinion given the nature of this forum. Very few of the questions asked here even cán have a "single best answer" the way we find in other SE forums. Even when an OP delineates very clear criteria for evaluation, this can not guarantee that only one answer will fit. The quoted text from the help centre applies to SE generally, not very well to WB particularly. Our forum is radically different in scope & practice from every other forum here. Some people may do better better jobs of writing questions to elicit a specific answer, while others simply have questions which can not be so easily tailored. I think one of the very best ways to kill this forum is to apply the letter of the law too forcefully and too broadly.

Another commentor brought up our VTC policy. While I agree with the overall policy and with the specific subsection in general terms, I don't believe that every single question asked in Worldbuilding needs to list three or five criteria by which to judge the answer. Sometimes the question simply isn't broken when left criterialess: the OP may be looking to cast a wider net; and there is also the risk of making a question too narrow, to the point where it may no longer be useful to the OP and may not even be useful to anyone else.

Lastly, even when an OP lists criteria, restrictions & limitations (per the excellent linked policy statement) we as a community can still easily come up with dozens of equally good, equally opinion based answers! And this is the essential problem that I deal with here, a problem that puts our hobby / art / activity at odds with Stack Exchange's stated goals. And we see an excellent demonstration of this with the examples in Johnny's response.

Quite simply put: WE DO NOT DEAL IN FACTS --- WE DEAL IN THE UNREAL!

Worldbuilding will never be able to follow the basic POB rule of SE to the letter. We can't even really follow it in spirit! The very best we can do is write up a policy & point to it. But in the end, when I look at that policy, it's just so easy to poke a hole in that particular section, because opinion -- creative opinion -- is the heart and soul of what we deal in!

Even the paradigm question in JBH's example can easily have a number of opinion based answers that all conform to the criteria and guidelines given in the query itself.

---

And then what?
I'd ask you, though: what do you think needs to be done? It's all well and good to ask the question; and I get to use tall caps and lots of exclamation points in response! But what's the next step?

Me I'd like to consider, if it's possible, a rewriting of the "opinion based" closure rationale to severely restrict its scope. Right now, the blurb reads: "This question is likely to be answered with opinions rather than facts and citations. It should be updated so it will lead to fact-based answers." This is the same blurb that one will find on all other SE forums.

The problems with this rationale as stated, and as it relates to Worldbuilding, are obvious.

1. Most of our answers are, in point of fact, pure opinions! Even when we bring science to bear in our answers, there is no way to offer that answer as the single and one best non-opinion answer.
2. Most of our answers derive from creativity rather than from citeable sources of fact.
3. There are no factual resources we can turn to for an unbiased answer for the vast majority of our question types.

That sort of logic is great in Chemisty & Physics where you can either point to a text book or a reliable webpage or a journal article to get the answer. There are certainly scholarly articles and text books we can point to --- but those are someone's opinion! Not universal fact.

Suggested Rewrite:
"This query asks for a non-creative opinion, each of which is as perfectly likely and perfectly reasonable as any other response. Queries should pose a worldbuilding problem or issue that can be answered by proposing creative solutions."

Answer 2

We are required to face some realities

1. Stack Exchange is not a discussion forum.

2. While we tend to work around them, we are bound to Stack Exchange's basic question-writing rules as found in the help center. The most notable problems are (a) every answer cannot be equally valid (it must be possible to choose a best answer) and (b) questions can't be open-ended (most opinion-based questions are).

3. The "Primarily Opinion-Based" VTC reason and its text are controlled by Stack Exchange, not us. It can't be suspended or modified. In other words, whatever solution we come up with must deal with the fact that we're stuck with it.

Over the years I've proposed a number of ways to help people work around these problems.

A. I've posted the following comment, when appropriate:

You're asking what we call a high concept question, which isn't a good fit for our site. Please review these links and help us by improving your question.

B. I've posted the following comment, when appropriate:

We need to convert this from an off-topic infinite list of things to an on-topic finite list of things.

C. I provided a policy solution: A question is POB if there are no listed criteria for judging a best answer

D. I created an alternative Welcome page: Welcome to Worldbuilding.SE!

I have used or pointed people to all of the above in my (usually vain) effort to help people reformulate their questions to meet basic Stack Exchange guidelines. As much as we might all wish it were otherwise, this isn't a free-for-all. Those aspects of the Help Center that we cannot modify are rules we are expected to live by.

Why not just ignore them? Because the result is chaos. People will point at the rules and say "you can't do that!" and others will scream "but we all agreed to ignore that!" and then we're all hunting for Meta posts for policies that few, if anyone, read.

If you want to avoid closure as Primarily Opinion-Based on this site:

1. Focus your question on the smallest problem possible. Literally take the time to wash all the extra fluff out. If you don't take the time to do this, don't expect us to do it for you.

2. ADD DETAILS I can't tell you how many times I've had an OP in comments say, "I intentionally didn't add details because I wanted people to come up with a variety of ideas." With all due respect, that's 100% contrary to how Stack Exchange was designed. Page after page in the Help Center explain the need to be specific and detailed.

3. Explain how your best answer will be judged. An OP's refusal to do this is 99% of the problem, and it's almost always because what they're doing is fishing for ideas.

The harsh reality of Stack Exchange is that it was intentionally designed as a place where people could go to get specific and useful answers. Consequently, it's a terrible place to go when you have writer's block because it's intentionally NOT designed for raw idea generation. Over the years I/We have tried to come up with explanations to help people work around this — but the limits imposed by Stack Exchange that keep these efforts from becoming easily found makes them basically worthless.

Which was a long-winded way of saying that I disagree with my learned colleague. But, gratefully, there aren't a lot of us who are fanatically policing the rules. So, with good fortune and providence, we're slapping hands enough to get people to write better questions but not so much that we're driving too many people away.

Answer 3

The irony is, it's ALL opinion. With such loose guidelines as to what is "opinion based," posts are arbitrarily defined as opinion or not, by moderator opinion.

Worse, this largely falls to a few, as you have to go out of your way to get involved with the review process or the meta discussions, and it's outside the reward scheme of SE, giving little incentive.

And while we throw about opinions about what's opinion, most answers and questions are STILL opinion based. Let's take a look at some of the current high ranking questions and answers of the month:

"Semi-plausible reason why only NERF weaponry will kill invading aliens"

...That one is that the top of the list for the month. The 76 point answer was suggesting the aliens play dead, because it's a game show for them. The 39 point answer suggested allergies to nerf darts, and a 7 point answer which the querent picked had it that the alien shields so happen to malfunction when hit by nerf.

So, after reviewing that, the most popular question this month with many of the most popular answers... how exactly does one avoid opinion-based answers, when deciding how nerf darts can kill aliens?

It appears to be a fear that, "the problem arise when the OP does not define the evaluation metric for picking a "best answer"", that, "every answer cannot be equally valid (it must be possible to choose a best answer)". ...So what was the best, non-opinionated answer here!? The one that got a green tick with seven votes? The one that suggested the gameshow? Or one of the many other radically different answers (the 3rd-most popular suggested NERF was an acronym for a weapon)?

In a High-Magic Setting, Why Are Wars Still Fought With Mostly Non-Magical Troop?

2nd most popular question this month. It seems open ended questions are the most popular. As if the aliens wasn't bad enough, now we're dealing with not even pseudo-science.

And it's not that this is a bad question... people enjoy it because there are MANY good answers that can be given, that it requires creativity to answer. Thus, we get another selection of answers that don't really respond to any clear metric.

Why do people still live on Earth Like Planets?

It just keeps going.... And this brings us to a good topic on scientific opinion. Because, though people are bringing up science, even though these may be the same arguments brought up by experts... it's still just OPINION.

They don't KNOW why people would stay on Earth like planets when given other choices, because the futuristic scenario being discussed has NOT happened yet, so we can't say for sure. AKA: We can only give an opinion on how it might be.

Conclusion

So, while some opinions are better than others, enough that people seek out the best opinions on sites like this... they are still opinion. The way we sort answers and questions is, in fact, a polling of community opinion.

So clearly, saying that a question is bad because it is opinion based is ridiculous and hypocritical, we'd need to delete 90% of the site if that was a genuine problem.

Why are "opinion-based" questions a problem?

Even the example by the OP, what colour should a spaceship be, someone might point out it could be painted white to reflect light so as to reflect sunlight, and another might suggest painting it like decorative WW1 biplanes. I'm not sure if that question is less relevant than the one about nerf darts.

I guess the real question, is whether the question has been answered before--you only really need one question about the colour of a non-specific spaceship.

The one about what a superhero does in daily life... is that less open ended than the one about nerf darts? Or the other two? Non specific questions are likely to get non-specific answers, which are less helpful, but what level of specificity is required, and how do we measure it?

In the end, it seems a lot of worry and hassle over something which can't be legitimately decided... which would likely be better handled by community voting (downvoting questions is specifically for filtering low quality ones).

Answer 4

Yes. I once wrote a question on what makes a religion popular, because I was trying to make a fictional religion in my world, and it was closed, deemed opion-based. Personally, I think that some "opion-based" questions can actually help in worldbuilding advice and help. I do not get Walhalla is with moderators sometimes.