Are questions on series which are answered by upcoming episodes "time localised"?

Question

Prompted by a question about the Game of Thrones TV series: What did Melisandre (the red woman/priestess) give birth to?

The scene being questioned about is at the end of one episode, and the question is very likely to be answered within the following episode (which has been produced, and scheduled for broadcast). I feel that this is time-localised, and therefore not a good question (as per FAQ).

A similar question from a different series (Doctor Who) that was given as a counter-example: Who is the eye patch woman? - I can't comment about the validity, since I'm not familiar with the storyline here, but it seems to me that again, this is time-localised as the answers are available in the unfolding of the rest of the series.

Frankly, I feel that this is the same as only half-reading a book before asking a question (in fact, another counter-example was raised: What is the significance of Saruman's Ring? - I actually agree that this is a valid question, as the questioner here has apparently read the entire book and found no answer).

Related question: What is the limit for questions about ongoing series?

Answer 1

First, I think this has bean nailed down in the last link you provided.

Most of these questions are fine, because new answers can be added when more information is available.

Game of thrones is a special case because it's remarkably faithful to the books. An answer could be provided right now without speculation.

Secondly, The question is not asking what will happen, but what just happened. As an example, asking "What the shadowy figure Melisandre give birth to is going to do?" would be asking what will happen and be spoiler-prompting.

I made my personal search to know what was this shadowy figure and I was underhandedly hit by a spoiler: I now know what it's going to do. Beofett, when he answered the question, took care to avoid that mater. He only gave information about the nature of the beast, and still took care of hiding it behind a spoiler tag.

As a side note, those type of questions are incredibly popular because many peoples will Google to get the answer to this question. However, this argument should not be considered when deciding it it's on/off-topic.

Answer 2

There is a fundamental difference between a question that is not appropriate for the site (that should be flagged and closed) and a question that is bad (that should be downvoted).

A question that does not have an answer yet does not automatically fall into either category, though it obviously still could. Just because something will probably receive an answer soon but doesn't have one now doesn't mean it's too localized - see What questions should be closed with reason “too localized”?. It may eventually become a bad question (one whose answer is trivially easy to find), but it isn't not appropriate for the site.

That's something I think we need to further refine as a site - the differentiation between a bad question and a question that's inappropriate for the site isn't very clear right now.