What's our policy on questions about fantasy/sci-fi creatures that aren't directly related to a specific on-topic work?

Question

There are multiple questions on the site about fantasy or science fiction creatures that aren't directly related to a specific on-topic work. Most are eventually closed, but they're often quite contentious

A few examples:

• Why don't zombies eat each other? [Closed]
• Aren't zombie outbreaks self defeating? [Open]
• What Happens to Zombies that Don't Eat? [Closed]
• Are Werewolves undead or alive? [Closed]
• What is it about the full moon that affects Werewolves? [Closed]
• Why are vampires not rotten like other undead? [Closed]
• How does Santa Claus get into houses without a fireplace? [Closed, Deleted]

Do we have a set policy on how to treat these type of questions?

Answer 1

OK, I'll bite. (Note that this is my personal opinion - I'm not speaking as a moderator here.)

These questions should be on-topic.

Questions about (for instance) zombies in general, without being tied to a particular work of SFF, are answerable by experts in SFF works. Where on Stack Exchange can we find experts on SFF works? Here, that's where. This is a site about the science fiction and fantasy genres, and questions like these are archetypal genre questions. A good answer to Why don't zombies eat each other? adds more to our collective knowledge of these genres than a good answer to some specific question like Why didn't Gandalf or Frodo Fly to Mount Doom? or Why don't muggle-born wizards use Muggle technology to fight Death Eaters? At the end of the day, we're here to gain knowledge about science fiction or fantasy as a whole, and a nice general answer to a genre-specific but not franchise-specific question teaches us more about that than any amount of knowledge about one particular work.

To put it another way, imagine you're an expert on SFF literature (the sort of person we want to attract to this site). What kind of question is more likely to pique your interest and inspire you to write up a really good answer: Aren't zombie outbreaks self defeating? or How many times has "Make It So" been demanded by anyone other than Picard? ? Trivia has its place here, but we shouldn't throw out complex and interesting questions in favour of keeping only trivia.

The counter-argument I'm expecting to see is that these questions are "too broad": they could take too many different possible answers depending on which particular work is used for context. My response to that is that a good answer will consider the genre as a whole and cover many different works. For instance, consider What Happens to Zombies that Don't Eat? and the excellent answers it has received from Jeff and Wad Cheber, both of which are general answers about zombie fiction. Franchise-specific answers to general genre questions should be considered bad answers.

Answer 2

In general the format of these questions would be considered off-topic should be closed. The reason being that the creatures have different abilities or features across a vast number of works.

Any one question therefore may have numerous acceptable answers. As our "too broad" close reason states (emphasis mine):

There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.

While these may be good questions that can solicit good answers from some our dedicated users who have a great knowledge of, it seems the overall SE preference to not do this. This is also not to say the subject matter is "off-topic"... Obviously vampires, werewolves, and zombies are on-topic; the formatting on the question would just need to be a better fit for the community.

One possible way to answer these questions could be a community wiki and have a different answer for each universe. However, that may still to be too much as many creatures such as zombie or vampires are in an almost countless number of works.

Answer 3

These are too broad

Without specifying a particular work, questions like Why don't zombies eat each other? are far too broad. Virtually any answer one wants can be correct, depending on whether one can find a work containing a "zombie" that follows the right principles.

Is it because:

• The virus in them seeks to infect human beings?
• They are reanimated corpses that simply obey the whims of their animator, and thus have no desire to attack their fellows?
• They are humans placed in a near-death state, and those don't want to eat humans' brains anyway?
• They thrive on life energy, and the undead don't possess it?
• They are evil, and see no reason to attack other evil creatures?
• They are actually aliens, and the "brain-eating" was a myth made up by frightened humans?

Any and all of these could be true, and most of them likely are nothing close to the sort of answer the OP wants.

The accepted answer on this question ends thus:

In short, it's a conceit of the genre, and each author gives it his own spin (or doesn't - some just don't address it).

Such questions are the definition of "too broad." They can have any of a very large set of answers, and producing a complete answer is basically a matter of creating a large set of mutually contradictory answers and combining them into one.

Fortunately, I believe most such questions can be made clearly on-topic by clarifying what kind of creature or situation the questioner has in mind, and asking about a specific work that exemplifies that situation. Thus the question becomes narrow, with well-defined answers.

For example, perhaps the questioner has Romero-style zombies in mind:

Question: Why do zombies in the Romero films not attack each other?

Answer: "...they seek living flesh. If it isn't warm, they leave it be."

Similarly, Should werewolves in literature be considered magical living creatures or part of the Undead? has two equally correct, entirely contradictory answers: yes and no. But specify a work of fiction (and the questioner probably had one vaguely in mind in any case), and the question becomes much more clear:

Question: In the Parasol Protectorate, are werewolves undead or alive?

Answer: Werewolves are considered a form of undead.

Or

Question: In the Dungeons and Dragons, are werewolves undead or alive?

Answer: Werewolves are living shapeshifters. Although they are vulnerable to silver, they are not undead.

Indeed, there very premise of such questions is often incorrect if applied to every instance of a category.

Why are vampires not rotten like other undead?

The answer varies from "magic" to "no, they are most certainly rotten." Specify a universe or narrow set of universes, and the question becomes better-posed.

With all such questions, we should pick a work that exemplifies what kind of creature the questioner is thinking of, and run with it.

That way we get to keep the question, but actually give it a proper answer, rather than a (possibly unbounded) set of answers. In addition, there's nothing preventing one from adding contextual genre information (if such a concept is well-defined) to such an answer.

Answer 4

For some reason I was not aware of this discussion until I got a notice that someone tried to modify a question I asked that's in this list. I'm referring to this question about werewolves. (Apparently someone tried to edit it to add that they wanted to be a werewolf!) I'm noting the date of this discussion and the date my question was closed and know it was at a time when I was overwhelmed with work dealing with the death of a parent and doing a lot of work on land we had bought to prepare for building on it. (That included a lot of paperwork and similar issues due to wetlands on the property.)

I was one of the early users of SF on Stack Exchange, but backed off from it dramatically after a while. I'm on other SE sections as well and I know, for many programmers and system admins there are running jokes that all you have to do is find the answer on SE and copy the code. But I find I use SE less and less. At this point I use it mostly for Blender issues, but, even there, I'm using Blender forums more often.

I cannot count the number of times I Google for something and the answer is on SE, but is closed. I recently found a question that was close to one I had that was marked as a dupe. The answer to it, on the original question, did not specifically state a clear answer to the closed question. I wasted two hours explaining to a moderator, who knows his stuff well, that many people do NOT know things as well as he does, and that the duplicate is never directly answered. He finally addressed that in a comment - which is all I was asking for from the start.

But it's not about just that two hours. It's about how many people found that question, went to the other one and went away to look elsewhere because their question wasn't answered.

My point: There are convergent thinkers and divergent thinkers. There are a lot of other ways to describe different ways people think. I'm not even getting into people dealing with reading disabilities or similar issues. What is obvious to one is not obvious to others.

One reason I use SE less and less and specific forums on topics more and more is because of issues like this: Hasty closing of questions that may not really need closing or marking questions as duplicates and closing when there is a subtle difference between the duplicate and the other question with an answer.

There often seems to be an ego issue connected with these issues. It's something like, "Oh, I can close this and it makes me feel like I have some control. Now that I've voted to close, I don't want to discuss it or change my mind."

I don't think my response here will change anything, but I do think, all across SE, the communities and moderators need to change their focus to understanding what's going on and thinking more carefully about closing. For instance, the "too broad" reason always felt to me to be a pointless reason to close. I don't see that SE gains anything by closing questions like that and it's quite possible that if such questions are left open, someone might, at some point, provide a useful answer.

I'm finding, more and more, that the answers I need are on forums other than SE and that the questions I have often closest match SE questions that are closed but could eventually yield helpful answers if they were not closed.