Where do we draw the line on fun questions?

Question

Now that the private beta is over, I see that the community is more open to light hearted questions that don't have definitive answers. For example:

https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/2111/uncommon-sushi-rolls

https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/2224/what-spices-herbs-toppings-can-be-put-on-popcorn

I posted this a while back. Does the community still frowm upon this type of question? I'm still curious to hear your answers :)

https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/176/whats-your-favorite-odd-combination-closed

Answer 1

I like Aaronut's classification of questions of this type. I freely admit to having a low tolerance of these types of questions. My decisions are more or less along the lines of Aaronut's classifications, but often it's just my purely subjective interpretation of it being a good question.

Here is a list of some of the different criteria I use to vote these closed:

• If it's too broad I vote to close.
• If it's a dupe I vote to close.
• If it's a GTKY I vote to close (e.g. what do you cook when alone?)
• If it's a "Whats your favorite ____?" I vote to close. (some exceptions)
• If it's a call for recipes I vote to close.
• If it isn't marked CW I judge it harshly - minimally downvote it.

Here are some rather subjective things that I use to judge positively:

• It was opened as a CW.
• The author acknowledges that it is potential close-fodder and proactively justifies why he asked it anyway.
• If I think it could provide some benefit or inspiration to an amateur or professional chef. The sushi combination one is an example.
• If it's a call for recipe ideas. e.g. the sushi one, and the popcorn one
• It is well defined (not overly broad)
• The author demonstrates some knowledge of the topic, and even suggests some answers himself

I acknowledge there's a lot of gray area here, and that I don't give these questions the benefit of the doubt. They start out at -5 on the brownie point scale and have to demonstrate that they're significantly useful to keep around.

It's inevitable that as we grow more and more people will come and post these questions, often as the first thing they ever contribute to this site. These questions tend to explode with answers, upvotes and reputation much more quickly than a legitimate answer, often giving the questioner and top answerer a nice rep boost that they wouldn't get otherwise. This, of course, only encourages more of the same.

An interesting observation on the quality of questions was made when http://stackexchange.com/ was most recently updated to show the list of "hot" questions across all sites. The majority of them sucked. Of the top 10 hot questions, 3 were polls, 2 were lists, 2 were "religious wars", and one was a blatant meme play. The concern is that this page is "the network's business card to new users, advertisers and venture capitalists".

The same applies to our front page. Do we really want Gordon Ramsay to stumble across this site and be presented with the following list of questions?:

• What is your favorite cheese?
• What is your worst kitchen mistake?
• How do I mayonnaise?
• I accidentally the souffle
• How long have you been cooking?

I don't.

Answer 2

I'm not opposed to fun questions, per se. The problem with so many (but not all) fun questions is that they're also incredibly broad/vague.

The difference between "Uncommon sushi rolls" and "What's your favorite odd combination" is that the former is still specific to a subject area, that being sushi. The question has a specific audience. The popcorn question has a more... well... un-expert audience, but still a specific audience.

The worst thing about totally open-ended questions is that they tend to attract bajillions of duplicates, because there are always a thousand different subtle rephrasings that sound like a different question, but really aren't. The more specific the question, the more obvious duplication becomes.

So, to summarize my position (which may or may not be the community's position):

• Broad, "hard" questions: OK.
  Example: What cookbooks do you always come back to?

• Specific, "soft" questions: OK.
  Example: Ways of cooking an egg?

• Broad, soft questions: No! Bad!
  Example: What do you cook when you are alone?

If you want to ask a soft question, go for it, but make sure it has a reasonably narrow scope so that the answers aren't all over the map.

Answer 3

There is a distinction between the two questions. Questions that are about "getting to know you" are still off topic. The appeal of these sites, according to the SE mission statement, is getting fast, expert answers. Asking about personal favorites is not an expert answer, not is it a question that can be answered. We are not here, again according to the mission statement, to build a typical chit-chatty discussion board.

Apparently, the community feels that asking about uncommon sushi rolls has valid expert answers.

While we can argue about what is and what isn't too discussiony, overly discussiony, or "fun", questions are offtopic.

Answer 4

No fun questions!! Fun is dependent on cooking. It's meta. Cooking isn't supposed to be fun. I want bechamel, unbroken, no smiling.

(This is a parody. I support fun questions. You can too.)