This question was closed, even though the fate of these questions is not yet clear

Question

With "How should we handle "any" (list) questions", the highest voted (+9, -3) answer right now (by a mod) is:

Since we're debating the issue right now, I'm not going to wield the mod close hammer

The next highest (+3, -0, also by a mod) is:

It seems to me pretty clear that the word "Any" in a question doesn't warrant immediate closing, but it does signal that the question should be watched.

I don't see any answers there that suggest that these questions are "by definition" off-topic, but this question was closed (by a mod, with no other close votes). My flag querying this was declined (I flagged initially rather than asking this question because we already have two meta questions about this, where I see no justification for the closure, and I don't see the merit in having a third):

I thought we had a consensus against list questions. If you object to this closing, please explain your reasoning on meta.

The question is from April 2011, so it includes the sadly-too-common clarification that it's not a list question:

(Please note I don't want a list of every time this has been used. If it's actually common, then a single example, or the first example, is enough, thanks).

The question has no satisfactory answers - either this is extremely rare, or the answer is that "no", there are no other examples of this. There's certainly no evidence at all that this question has led to "one work per answer" style answering or poll-style voting, which are the usual indications of a problematic list question (again: it doesn't want a list).

I found something new to me in this story. I'd like to know if this is a particular conceit of the author's, or if this is something that's based on either real-world research or a common (or at least not new) fictional-world idea. Considering the author's work, it's reasonable to consider that either of those is true. A list is not needed to answer this question; a list has not been provided (in any form) for this question.

The second previous meta question related here is: Are questions looking to simply prove or disprove a premise with a yes/no answer a good fit for our site?

Here, we have the highest voted answer (+7, -0):

These are some great answers posted, and it seems (so far) that the consensus is that these types of questions do have a place here.

I again see no answers to that post that suggest that these questions should be immediately considered off-topic - i.e. so much so that a moderator should (with no other prompting) close them.

Why was this question closed?

Answer 1

Your question has been edited and reopened.

I edited it so as to remove the clause about "a single example is enough" and make it more clearly asking about the origin of the idea rather than just asking for more examples of it. While list questions are off-topic, questions about the inspiration for an idea in a given SFF work or about the origins of an idea or trope in SFF literature as a whole are both perfectly fine.

I was reluctant to wield my mod-hammer and reopen it unilaterally, but my edits bumped it to the front page so that it got some attention, and I also mentioned it in chat as a possible candidate for reopening. After three people had voted to reopen it, I cast the fourth vote and it's now open again.

Answer 2

I notice that you cited my question and answer as justification for why your question should be left open.

Yet you only quoted the first sentence of my answer, and ignored the vast majority of it.

The answer that I wrote clearly outlines that part of the problem is that certain wordings in these types of questions are problematic, and should be avoided. In particular:

I propose that any question asking "does x exist?" be worded to make no mention of examples. Any good answer will, by definition, include examples. A great answer will contain a fairly comprehensive collection of examples, and explain the context.

Mentioning examples (whether it is "I'm looking for examples" or "I only need one example") seems to be the flag many people identify as indicating a list question.

If the question is worded to simply focus on the problem, we may be able to avoid the issue altogether.

Yet the last sentence of your question is:

(Please note I don't want a list of every time this has been used. If it's actually common, then a single example, or the first example, is enough, thanks).

In short, your question, as it is currently worded, is an example of what that second meta question you linked clearly indicates is what you should not be doing.

Answer 3

This question was closed for being a list question. Whether it's worded as “list all the works that have X” or “what are some works that have X” or “is there a work that has X” is irrelevant. List questions call for items rather than answers. Think of it that way:

If citing one work that has X would answer the question, it's a list question.

Now there is possibly a good question in there, calling for a study of color perception in science fiction. An answer would discuss multiple approaches to basing a color description system on four colors including “clear”. The question needs to be edited to this effect instead of asking for items. “A single example is enough” is not acceptable.

Furthermore the question should be made more specific, because it's very open-ended: are we talking about unmodified humans, modified humans, aliens, robots? Is this under sunlight, some other starlight, some artificial lightning? Would magic be involved? Are you after something that's scientifically sound, or does it have to only make sense from a cognitive point of view, or are you looking rather at the cultural aspects?

There's another thing that makes me queasy, and should be addressed in an edit: it's partly a question about science and history rather than about SF. Uses “in actual historical texts” do not belong here, nor does a detailed explanation of color perception. The existing answers are affected by this off-topic bias — one is about linguistics (and could be a good answer to a question about the background to Jean Auel's writings), one is about the biology of certain animals, one is about human biology and its reflection in culture. None of the existing answers are really about SF.

Answer 4

My attention was drawn to that question by a flag to this answer to it for being a non-answer. While that answer didn't answer the question, it seemed to me that this was a clear list question that had already gathered several 'me too' style non-answers. In addition it was a question of the form 'are there any X', which I've always seen to be list questions given that's what they frequently become as multiple people add their own single example answers to them.

I took the number of votes on Gilles answer, which advocates closing questions exactly like this one, to be consensus on the topic. That question was asked a month ago and hasn't seen any new activity in over 2 weeks.

I'd also like to address a common misconception, which your post potentially makes:

There's certainly no evidence at all that this question has led to "one work per answer" style answering or poll-style voting, which are the usual indications of a problematic list question (again: it doesn't want a list).

We don't wait to close list questions once they've accumulated a list. The vote to close reason is:

This question is not a good fit to our Q&A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.

(emphasis mine) We the community should vote to close when we see bad questions that aren't a good fit here, we don't wait for hypothetical bad answers to make bad questions worse. We preemptively prevent this from happening by voting to close. The question asker then can make changes to their question to improve it and have it reopened.