I haven't read the book/watched the movie/... May I ask a question about it?

Question

I would like to ask a question about a book or short story that I haven't read, or about a movie or TV series that I haven't watched, or about a radio program that I haven't listened to, etc.

Is that allowed? I've read a little about the book/movie/…, checked its Wikipedia article, googled a bit, and didn't find the answer to my question. Is this sufficient, or do I need to read/watch/… the work in full before I can ask a question?

---

To clarify, since one of the answers has completely gone on a tangent: I am not asking about any specific question on the site, recently discussed on meta or otherwise. This is a general issue, and I hope this thread can have generally-applicable answers and can be made a faq.

Answer 1

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.

A question is still a duplicate if the original is worded in such a way that the duplication wouldn't necessarily be obvious to someone who hadn't actually watched/read/listened to the source.

There are still plenty of legitimate questions that can be asked for those who haven't consumed the media in question.

As a comment in another answer mentioned, questions about suggested reading order are a good example. Other examples of good questions about material the OP hasn't read/watched yet could include "Does this movie adaptation of a title remain faithful to the written works it is based on?", or "Does this title I haven't seen have any cross-over with this title that I have seen?"

Answer 2

_{I'm giving a temporary answer, if Gilles has a better one typed up I'll delete this.}

This is fully allowed.

Reason 1:

Unless the question is about a major easily googlable critical point of the work, there is absolutely no way to distinguish a question asked by someone who has not seen/read the source material, and someone who did but doesn't remember all the details.

Since we are supposed to only judge the posts on their content, and not context, you can not prohibit questions based on unread books while allowing questions on not-remembered-in-perfect-detail books.

Reason 2:

A ton of currently existing questions (hell, probably a vast marjority, or at least a sizeable chunk) are answerable from the source material. We would have to close all of them if such a rule is adopted.

As a random exhibit of both reasons #1 and #2:

• Why could Quirrell tolerate Harry's touch at the beginning of Philosopher's Stone?

  The question is answered trivially from the book (heck, I knew the answer 1 second after reading the title). Yet the question was asked by @Slytherincess, who is universally acknowledged on this site as not merely a deep expert ion all things Harry Potter, but self-admittedly has a great memory and remembers a great deal of Harry Potter trivia.

Reason 3:

It's not reasonable to expect people to read large volumes (e.g. LOTR/Harry Potter/Comic series) or hard-to-obtain works (old comics).

Answer 3

The reason it's never been brought up in the past two years is because you've framed a scenario no reasonable person would argue against:

I've read a little about the book/movie/…, checked its Wikipedia article, googled a bit, and didn't find the answer to my question.

The context, however, of bringing this up now is your answer on "Is general reference used inconsistently?", where you claimed (emphasis mine):

Note that asking questions about a movie does not require having seen the movie, let alone be intimately familiar with every character.

as a defense to not closing a question as "General Reference" even though it was demonstrably shown to be something that anyone checking the Wikipedia article for or googled a bit would've gotten an answer to.

If a question is easily answered by a reference, regardless of whether or not the person asking did, in fact, do that research, it's closable as "General Reference". If someone legitimately did basic research before asking a question of this ilk, the whole problem doesn't come up.

But what we're really talking about asking a question blindly: that is, I know nothing about a movie, didn't do any preliminary research, but I want to ask a question about it.

Like I said above, the motivation or background for asking the question has very little, if anything, to do with closing a question as "General Reference". While unlikely, one could ostensibly stumble blindly into asking a really difficult question that's not easily answerable by a general reference.

But that doesn't mean SE doesn't expect or require users to do basic background research before asking questions, because it does. For many forms of media, that which you enumerated—checking the Wikipedia article or googling around a bit—is a good place to start. For movies, however, it's reasonable to expect people to have watched them for two reasons:

• Having seen the movie helps demonstrate this is an actual problem you face.

• Movies are generally no more than 3 hours long, with most these days in the 90-120 minute range. If it's something you're really interested in, taking 2 hours to watch the dang movie is the least you could do before asking.

Which leads to what it means that something is "required" or "expected" if it's not to close a question. There are at least two things:

• Everyone's encouraged—arguably even expected—to down-vote questions that do not demonstrate that basic research has been done.

• Users who routinely ask poorly thought-out, poorly researched questions are supposed to get some time in the penalty box as a means of corrective behavior.

But, to reiterate, the Dark Knight Rises judge question is not "General Reference" and did not need to be closed because the person asking did not see the movie.

Rather, it was closed and should remain closed because it was easily answered if someone did take the time to do some basic research before asking it.

Or to put it another way, you don't have to do any preliminary research before asking a question, but don't be surprised if your question gets closed for being "General Reference" or you get a number of down-votes for asking it.

Answer 4

I think that what Mark Trapp was saying in his answer has some merit in that if, as you declare in your question, you do the proper research on Wikipedia/etc. and still cannot find the answer to your question, then it almost by definition should not be closed as General Reference, even if to someone who reads/watches/listens/feels?/tastes? the work in question the answer is obvious.

That being said, it is possible and likely that a question such as what you describe will be down voted, and possible VTCed. This is due to peoples interpretations of the rules of "General Reference". Personally, when I come across questions that I feel may possibly be General Reference, I do the research first myself. If I can find the answer in a reasonable amount of time from a reference site that is considered "reputable", then I will VTC. However I also will usually leave a comment with where the information can be found, unless the answer is glaringly obvious, that's when I leave it up to the OP to figure it out for themselves.

In the situation that you describe, it is highly unlikely that I would find the answer, as the research that the OP would have done would not have found it. Though admittedly if I had read/watched/listened/felt/tasted the work then I may have better luck researching the answer (having knowledge that the OP wouldn't). If the answer is not found on a reputable reference, then I don't think the question should be voted down and/or closed. That doesn't preclude other people from thinking differently however.

In short, I think questions of the type that you describe are most certainly allowed, however they are much more likely to receive errant down votes and VTCs than questions from people who have read/watched/etc. The best practice for anyone submitting a question like that in my opinion would be to be up front about the fact that they haven't read/watched/etc. the work in question. The main reason for asking a question IMO should be to receive an answer, and as long as that is accomplished, the question has performed its function adequately.