Linked Questions

30 votes
6 answers
558 views

Are story identification questions still appropriate?

Despite Jeff's latest SE Blog post, I think story ID questions should still be ok here. I think there can be good and bad story ID questions, and while the bad ones can fall into the categories Jeff ...
Ward - Trying Codidact's user avatar
30 votes
5 answers
890 views

Should we burninate General Reference?

The General Reference closure reason has been a continuing source of contention. I'm still not clear on what it is intended to accomplish (explanations I've seen have ranged from showing that the ...
Beofett's user avatar
  • 54.1k
26 votes
4 answers
1k views

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

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 ...
user avatar
18 votes
1 answer
339 views

Why are we punishing simple questions for "not doing research"?

I ran across this Hot Network Question about Dune, and why the Dune universe folks don't use guns. As someone who never read the books, and has seen the Lynch movie (which also apparently never read ...
Machavity's user avatar
  • 51.8k
14 votes
3 answers
318 views

What should we do with a story-identification question where the asking user has been deleted?

On the question I am looking for the author of a trilogy the OP user13147 seems to be deleted. So there is no hope to identify this "Sci-Fi trilogy" as the user cannot respond. How should we handle ...
DavRob60's user avatar
  • 95.9k
13 votes
3 answers
143 views

Do we want to remove this line from the 'what to ask'?

Our main site's 'What topics can I ask about here?' page, has this under the 'what not to ask' section: Facts easily found on a reference site: Who played X in Y? However, this line was from the ...
user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
290 views

Is the answer appearing in the first few results of a Google search sufficient basis for a *potential* General Reference closure?

I know there are previous discussions on this, but they appear to be somewhat contradictory, and it is coming up enough that we should have a clear and current consensus. In the original What sites ...
Beofett's user avatar
  • 54.1k
9 votes
3 answers
296 views

Why exactly do we still have a "General Reference" close reason? [duplicate]

In Mark Trapp's recent question about why the Tom Bombadil question was deleted, he mentioned a couple of points that really stood out to me. I never realized this, but apparently Scifi.SE is one of ...
Gabe Willard's user avatar
  • 21.1k
7 votes
2 answers
123 views

Are questions that just ask for a description of a plot-point on-topic?

So, here’s a question that basically asks “What happens in this recently-released movie that I haven’t seen?” https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/57136/who-dies-in-captain-america-2 Is that on-...
Paul D. Waite's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
198 views

Does sci-fi have extremely low standards for questions compared to other stackexchanges?

I have noticed recently that a lot of questions that get asked are extremely easily answered with 10 seconds of Google. Examples include: What horse or horses played Shadowfax? Who is the head of ...
Theik's user avatar
  • 5,389
9 votes
3 answers
244 views

Movie trailer based questions

How do we deal with a question like this: How is Magneto pulling Mystique in the Days of Future Past trailer? When a question such as this is asked, here is what can happen: Someone knows something ...
Möoz's user avatar
  • 45.4k
-5 votes
1 answer
91 views

Questions that largely have the same answer?

This question is similar to Should all questions without explicit canon answers be closed?, except that I'm going a step further in asking about topics where the lack of canon makes most questions ...
Anthony's user avatar
  • 3,319
6 votes
1 answer
54 views

Can I ask a question that would require a list as an answer?

I'm editting the content of my question to better reflect what I want to ask. I would like to know how many and what spells did a character cast in the entire story, which would obviously require a ...
IamVeryCuriousIndeed's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
61 views

Is a question that can be answered by simply watching/reading welcome here? [duplicate]

I recently posted a question asking about the Percy Jackson movie. I initially had a secondary, minor question asking if the second movie was just as different from it's book. In a comment, Keen ...
PiousVenom's user avatar
  • 10.7k