What should be our Off-Topic reasons?

Question

Changes are coming to the Question Closing system. The existing Vote To Close reasons are being overhauled. We've already seen some of these changes in the Duplicate Question area. That link above has a full rundown of the changes, and I recommend reading it, but this question is for one specific area:

5. Off-topic closures will include feedback on what specifically is off-topic for that site. (new)

• Each site will have a list of its own specific pre-selected “Off-Topic” reasons (up to 3)
• Each closer will either select one of the site's standard reasons from the list (for instance, “Recipe requests are off-topic, although recipe replacements, etc. are allowed”),
  or,
• Closers can enter a free-form reason ("Your question appears to be about 'Cat Grooming', which is off-topic for Stack Overflow.")
  Free-form reasons will be presented as a comments, but the close dialogue will refer the reader to the comments for more info
• Free-form reasons picked by closers will be available to subsequent close-voters on that question as one of the selections from the list
• These lists will be determined by the communities, and moderators will be able to update them, subject to review by each other, their community, and the SE team

Reasons will need to be specific enough to make it clear to most readers what is and is not allowed (off-topic reasons of the form "Things that are NOT X" will be discouraged).

This is also the place to address any closing reason that applies to one site but not others (for instance, the "General Reference" close reason on English Language and Usage is moving here).

So, what should our site's Off-topic close reasons be? Please only post one per answer.

Answer 1

The main non-obvious question type that is about SF but isn't accepted here is lists and recommendations. (Two types really, but they have similar problems.)

• Requests for lists of works or recommendations are off-topic as they do not fit our questions and answers format. Feel free to ask about people's favorites in chat.

Answer 2

This question does not pertain to Science Fiction or Fantasy

We've gotten a couple that would fall under this:

• https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/23303/effects-of-emp-in-hypothetical-superconductor-based-devices-equipment (Real-life theoretical physics question)
• One I vaguely remember that seemed like it would have fit better on Biology.SE, but still would've been off-topic there (I can't find it now, but remember it having been closed)
• A story about passengers and pilots getting food-poisoned causing a disastrous terminal situation? (A non-scifi/fantasy story identification)
• Poké Balls. Can any such device exist? (Another reallife physics/biology/ish question)

Related meta question: Are real world speculation questions still on topic?

Answer 3

Questions about religious texts which are asked from the assumption that said text is "fiction" are off-topic.

(frankly, i'm half a mind to NOT consider that offtopic, instead closing such things as "Not Constructive")

Reference: Why was this question about the Old Testament closed as off-topic?

Answer 4

Off-Topic reason: Genre classification questions are offtopic.

Examples: "is X Science Fiction"? "Is Y SciFi or Fantasy?"

References: Should questions about "Is X science fiction" be off-topic?

Answer 5

I've two suggestions but I'm going to limit them to one per answer as requested. Here's the first.

Speculation on future events of a work-in-progress series

There have been a number of cases of these recently, but two in particular that I'm thinking of are "What canon level will the 7th Star Wars movie be?" (closed as not constructive) and "Spoiler: Why did Ned- Stark not mention it?" (closed as not constructive).

In both of these cases, the question is totally impossible to answer for the simple reasons that (question 1) we don't know yet, and (question 2) it's based on an as-yet-to-be confirmed or denied fan theory.

Looking through the new list of close reasons, I can see that "primarily opinion-based" may also be viewed as an option for either of these, but I believe that "off topic" is more suitable because they're relating to things we don't know about the series yet (and in the latter case may never know). Because of that they encourage discussions, speculation about the future course of the series, arguments, theorizing, etc, which are squarely off-topic for a Q&A site. These two questions can't even solicit opinions; "an opinion is a belief about matters commonly considered to be subjective", and they don't even go that far.