Opinion questions: if not here, then where?

Question

Stack Exchange sites often say that they are designed for questions that can be "answered, not discussed." That is to say, there should be a definitive answer to your question, not a poll of opinions or an unanswerable query.

My question is, is there a recommended place for more opinion-based questions? For example, I was about to post a question "Is there a definitive Mary Jane Watson monologue from the comics?" here in the Sci-Fi section, but I realized that's more of a discussion, and thus probably wouldn't be well-received. I respect the community enough not to break the rules and post it here, but I still need an answer for a script I'm working on.

Is there somewhere that Stack Exchange recommends for that kind of thing? Or are there any favorite alternatives among the community?

Answer 1

Staying within the StackExchange family of sites, Chat would be the place to go.

From the help center

What are chat rooms?

Each chat room defines a specific topic; the conversation in that room is expected to loosely follow the topic. Chat typically has a few established rooms for common topics.

From the chat FAQ (note that all chats seem to share the same FAQ page)

What can we chat about?

This site is an extension of The Stack Exchange Network, so discussion should more or less revolve around the same topics you'd find at The Stack Exchange Network — but in an interactive, less strictly Q&A focused way. Do have fun, but please keep it professional and always be respectful of your fellow community members.

Our chat room isn't the busiest place around, but there's usually a few people at least lurking about. If you feel there would be too much noise in the main room, you can always create a separate room of your own.

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If you want to leave the StackExchange ecosystem.

I don't participate there, but ComicVine has a fairly healthy message board community well suited to discussions such as this.

Answer 2

Some opinion questions are OK; see http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/

Constructive subjective questions:

1. inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.
2. tend to have long, not short, answers.
3. have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.
4. invite sharing experiences over opinions.
5. insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.
6. are more than just mindless social fun.

Item 5 in this list is appropriate here; if a question invites opinion but if that opinion can be backed up, then by all means ask it.

There's a reason for the "primarily" in the "primarily opinion-based" close reason, and that reason is that the opinions here cannot be backed up, or that the facts and references used to back it up are weak.

In general the objective is to avoid long-winded discussions and disagreements. For that kind of question, it may be better to hunt down a discussion forum relating to the topic you want to ask on, and register for that.