Should we close questions for being "too trivial"?

Question

Historically, it was decided that it was not required to have read a book/watched a movie to ask a question. This, of course, led to its own issues: the dreaded General Reference.

Of course, as a policy, it was decided that we should not use General Reference as a close reason, and more recently, it and "Too Localized" were removed as close reasons.

The conversation here brings these topics back up again, though.

Keen initially closed the question as off-topic

because it is exceptionally trivial. It's not unclear at all what happens during that scene.

The community, however, voted to re-open it.

The most upvoted answer to the "I haven't read the book/watched the movie" question explains

Yes, you can ask a question about material you have not read/watched/listened to.

However, that does not exempt you from any of our other rules.

General reference is still general reference. You can't claim "I didn't read the book, so it isn't general reference to me".

Questions that demonstrate a lack of research should still be downvoted. Posting a question about material you haven't read isn't sufficient research on its own.

This becomes a little confusing as it's stated that it's OK to ask a question about something you have basically no knowledge of - but that General Reference still applies (of course, there was always the discussion of what constituted General Reference).

BUT, this question/answer was from a few weeks before meta decided to "burninate general reference"

At this point, Beofett wrote (and was quoted in the accepted answer)

Why is it not sufficient to say "if a question is trivial, boring, and demonstrates little to no research, downvote it"? Note that the hover-text for downvoting states quite clearly that a question or answer should be downvoted when it "does not show any research effort" or "it is unclear or not useful"!

and continues

For truly useless questions, most of them will likely fall into other closure categories (Gilles has mentioned on a couple of occasions that "too localized" in particular can usually cover some of the most egregious examples of "General Reference" questions.

In the answer referenced, Gilles wrote

I do not find the GR close reason absolutely necessary, because too localized can fill its role.

Fast forward to today.

General Reference is gone. Too Localized is gone.

How do we want to handle questions like these in the future?

I downvoted the question that brought this back up. It is poorly researched. I don't see how anyone could possibly interpret that scene any other way. But do we want to close questions for being "too trivial"? General Reference and Too Localized were the two close reasons that "too trivial" would have fit into (based on specifics), but those are no longer valid close reasons.

If we DO want to close these questions, what should the correct close reason be?

Answer 1

To repeat myself, even though it was quoted in the question:

Why is it not sufficient to say "if a question is trivial, boring, and demonstrates little to no research, downvote it"? Note that the hover-text for downvoting states quite clearly that a question or answer should be downvoted when it "does not show any research effort" or "it is unclear or not useful"!

I think we can generally agree that trivial questions that demonstrate little to no research aren't usually what we'd consider "good content".

However, there are three reasons I can see for allowing them (i.e. not closing them):

1. First and foremost, "too trivial" is entirely subjective. What is too trivial for one person may be interesting to another. That, I believe, is exactly why "does not show any research effort" is wording directly associated with downvoting questions. There's no way that I can think of where we can objectively draw a line and say "on this side of this definition, it is too trivial and should be closed, and on the other side, it is acceptable". While that may be true to varying extents with some of our other close reasons, at least they all have basic descriptions that provide some context. If we can't come up with a sentence or two to expand on what distinguishes "trivia" from "too trivial", then we will have a difficult time guiding users to improve their questions. If someone can come up with a clear, objective definition or description of "too trivial" that can be consistently and clearly communicated, I'd be all for it, but I don't believe it is possible (I could be wrong, though).
2. What seems like a trivial or simple question could result in an exceptionally good answer. It's happened before. I don't have time to search for examples now, but I'm pretty sure they're out there.
3. Encouraging new users. Nothing discourages someone from participating on a site like their first attempt at participation being slapped down with a "sorry, your contribution isn't up to our high standards". Not every one of these questions will come from a new user, but some, including the one that sparked this debate, will be first-time posts.

Answer 2

I'll restate what @Beoffet said.

TL;DR: If a user personally feels that the answer to the question is obvious, downvote the question. Do NOT close.

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If a user can't find a conclusive proof that the answer is obvious for EVERYONE (example: the ST3 Pon Farr question wasn't obvious to me despite having seen the movie, so it clearly isn't everyone), that user has no legitimate reason to demand the question to be closed.

You have no right to deprive other users of useful Q&A information just because you personally and subjectively feel it's not useful to you.

To quote my usual argument about "too obvious" - for pretty much every active supporter of closing "trivia" questions, I can easily find a question of theirs whose answer I consider to be obvious.

Supporting anecdote: @Slytherincess (top HP expert here) at least once asked a question easily (at least for me) answerable by a quote from HP book.

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Oh, and for all of you supposed 'experts' who consider the answer to the question being discussed as 'obvious' - according to canon, you CAN survive Pon Farr without sexual activity, via a special challenge. Google "kal-if-fee"

Answer 3

No, unless our goal is to prevent people from joining the site. Since "too trivial" is closely related to google questions, I will address both at once.

1. We should be encouraging new users to participate in the community, and many such people have questions that might seem very basic to users with more experience and expertise in the field.

This question seems to be suggesting that Stack Overflow should only be used as a last resort - when an answer cannot be found elsewhere on the internet.

Surely this is the opposite of the site's intended purpose. I thought it was supposed to become the first place people would come for answers. To quote the FAQ,

"No question is too trivial or too "newbie"."
Source

And:

Joel says that the only bad simple question is a duplicate simple question. I say simple questions are OK as long as they’re actually interesting (in some way) for other users to consider and answer.
- Jeff Atwood

The podcast quoted above, along with some suggestions from users, led to the introduction of a new close reason: "General Reference". After this new reason was tested, Jeff changed his mind and said that it was a valid reason to VTC:

Per the discussion in Stack Exchange Podcast #20, and after evaluating the close reason on english and scifi, I now agree with Joel: I believe this close reason has too much potential for abuse and misunderstanding. It is unlikely we will ever adopt this close reason network wide.
- Jeff Atwood

2. The suggestion that an answer can be found by using Google is actually all the more reason to answer basic questions here. We want people to see our site in the Google results, don't we? Imagine a person who has never heard of SE. This person googles "What species is Chewbacca" or whatever, and the third result is from SF&F.SE. This person now knows about us, and it is at least possible that he or she will join the site. This is something to be desired, not discouraged.

Part of the thinking behind Stack Overflow was for those Google searches to link somewhere useful.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html
By answering questions properly, instead of saying 'just Google it', you hopefully set up a definitive answer that Google will find for evermore.
Source

Seriously, read the article linked in the middle of that quote. One of the original principles on which the SE network was founded was "Make sure that Google searches produce useful results - namely, our results". I see no legitimate reason to change this fundamental principle now.

3. The most basic questions are likely to be the questions that are most common. All the more reason to answer them here so people have access to the best information available.

4. Meta Stack Exchange has made it abundantly clear that it is unacceptable to close questions simply because the information is already available elsewhere. The general guidelines are quite emphatic about this point: we should embrace the non-googlers, not shun them.

5. This site is a community of like minded people who are interested in the subject at hand; we are experts, amateur enthusiasts, students, professionals, scholars, and lay people. We are not the "Did you do enough research" police. It isn't our job to punish strangers for not doing what we might do if we were in their position. We are here to provide answers to relevant questions. We are supposed to make information readily available to whomever needs it. We are not supposed to make sure everyone does their homework.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't see any legitimate reason to deny people access to useful information, especially not on the grounds that it is too rudimentary to be bothered with.

Answer 4

Without wanting to get too far into specifics of individual questions, I lean towards closure.

The reason why is because the purpose of the SE network is to serve as a useful Q&A resource both now and in the future. Answering a "too trivial" question satisfies the "now" part, but opens the floodgates for a very poor signal-to-noise ratio for the "future" part.

I fully accept DVK's reasoning that sometimes the answer may not be obvious to everyone, but that's where the closure system can play a part. Those with insta-close powers should stand back and let the 5 votes take their course. If 5 separate 3000 rep+ people think a question is "too trivial" then there seems a reasonable chance that it actually is.

I only say "lean towards" closure because I actually watched the Search for Spock recently and for the first time in a while, and this time what was going on was pretty damn obvious to me, but every previous time it wasn't.

Again, however, that's something that the "reopen" system can handle. So the way the system works (and is designed to work) is that it would take a consensus of 5 to make the initial closure, then a further consensus of 5 (or even an insta-reopen) to overrule it.

The "on hold" rather than "closed" wording helps a lot here; it sends a signal to the person asking that the question hasn't been completely ruled out. Some appropriate commenting along the lines of "we think this is a question that can be trivially answered by referring to source material" can also help, and accomplish the job of actually helping provide the asker with the answer that they want, all without clogging up the site with trivial questions.

This is all in the spirit of a close vote not being a slap-down for a question, but instead sometimes being a useful tool to help direct the asker towards an answer (or towards the fact that no answer exists) while at the same time keeping the overall quality of questions on the site at a higher level.