After the migration from mi.yodeya to StackExchange, are riddle-type questions considered appropriate? According to the answer from @RebeccaChernoff to the question "Appropriateness of survey questions", I would imagine that they are appropriate - after all, riddles do have an objective answer. In fact, I would even take the argument a little further and posit that a riddle is not significantly different than asking and answering your own question, which is explicitly allowed on other SE sites. But before I ask any riddle questions, I'd like to confirm that others in the community agree.
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We expect this site to have a few exceptions from "the way things are usually done around here" (that is, on SE sites)—because the community is used to "the way things are usually done around here" (that is, on mi.yodeya). While the two communities are similar, and everyone on any SE site is encouraged to check out other SE sites, we do understand that you have a history of your own. So while, for instance, riddle questions like the mi-yodeya-series would be discouraged on new SE sites, no one's going to come in and start slaying questions with a jawbone. OTOH, over time, we'd like to bring things into alignment as much as possible—simply because we've found that standards that work on 50 sites are likely to work on site #51. Consequently, I've been asked to work with Isaac towards this end (okay, actually, I volunteered). Isaac, next time you're available, can you drop into the chat and give me a yell? |
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My problem with riddle questions is that they are, in a way, the opposite of the kind of questions we want here. Generally, we want people to include as much relevant information in their question as possible, both so that people can learn from the question and so that answers can be well-suited to what the question is actually looking for. With riddles, the asker makes an effort to conceal relevant information, to keep the answer from being obvious. In terms of the SE How to Ask document, riddle questions do not share research and are inherently vague. UPDATE: I have now closed nearly all of the questions in riddle. I salvaged a handful that I thought could stand on their own as real questions and removed the riddle tag from them. I also wrote the following into the tag's wiki:
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I dunno, riddles are kinda fun. If they're tagged "riddle", then what's the harm in having them on the site? It's not like we're a huge volume site and allowing people to post riddles is going to bring the server to its knees... Even more, I think riddles are beneficial to the site, because they will attract attention from exactly the kind of people we want frequenting Judaism.SE - people who enjoy a good Jewish intellectual challenge! |
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