Today I told a user to please read the FAQ to understand why recipe questions were off-topic. He did. He said it didn't help. He's right. One of my biggest issues with the current state of things is that new users are forced to basically find out where the walls are by walking into them. From the FAQ:
"Food and Cooking - Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur cooks and chefs."
Please look around to see if your question has already been asked (and maybe even answered!) before you ask.
Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered!"
Nothing there about recipes, brewing, growing, local questions, weird snacks... I know the future FAQ has been well discussed and close to consensus on META (question/110/what-should-our-faq-contain), but a new user today is no better for it.
Can we fix this by just getting our FAQ up, even if it's in a provisional form that will change over time?