Due to the nature of our site, many questions can be really long and difficult to answer. At some point, we need to close questions as too broad and request that they be broken up into smaller, more specific questions. As a community, we need to decide on some specific guidelines for how large questions can be. Is if one question per Question? Or a narrow topic? Or do we deal with it on a case-by-case basis?

This is necessary both to help new users know how specific to make their questions and also so that us moderators have a policy we can follow about when to close as too broad and when to leave open.

So how big is too big for questions and how do we determine reliably when to close and when to leave open?

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Related, the 'optimal' scope: meta.cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/65/… –  Steven Jeuris Sep 4 at 15:59
 
Heh, that's actually almost a duplicate @Steven... and I even answered that one. feels sheepish –  Josh Gitlin Sep 4 at 16:10
 
Can anyone really provide a valid reason as to why there just shouldn't be a mix as long as it's not an obvious troll, bot, or...very stupid question? With too many rules, you guys are just gonna disencourage people to ask questions or participate. I mean do we have limited space? No. Does it cause us to get less traffic? No. If noone finds it intriguing will it hurt anyone? No....I think rules that are too strict are going to be more hurtful than helpful. I do know there's a line you can cross, but...you guys dont want ANY anecdotes...just studies... –  user3433 Sep 5 at 2:19
 
...I really wish I could give you the insight into how valuable anecdotes can be especially when combined with empirical research....things have to be a certain length...you have to put them in a certain context...you can't apparently ask people for anecdotes....nor ask them to validate citations they make and analyze them instead of just copy and pasting them....or heaven forbid do both in ONE question. –  user3433 Sep 5 at 2:24
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1 Answer

Some thoughts:

There is no reliable way and it will always be a hunch. Some questions are hard to nail down and need a bunch of subquestions to define them. Others only need their title and even filling in the text field below that is unnecessary redundancy. But even those questions that need a fence of subquestions to circumscribe them all point at a single focus of interest.

If a question reads like an essay and asks you to cover all aspects of a field in your answer, it is too much. I think Taal's questions on hypnotherapy and NLP are good examples of this. I'd love to see a poll asking who of the 111 visitors actually read through the whole question. A question that makes you want to go tl;dr, is too big. The problem is not that any part of the question is wrong or off-topic, but that Taal wants to understand everything about hypnotherapy and NLP through one single question. And that is not what SE can do, that would be a chapter in a psychotherapy handbook, and those chapters exist and wait in the next university library for Taal to read.

My personal preference in natural sciences is: one question per question.

In psychology, journal articles have a scope of one question per article. My reason for that is, that after an answer, there are many open paths that your research might take. If you try to foresee all the related questions, you are preliminarily closing all those open doors, denying you the chance to have surprising ideas and make unexpected discoveries. How do you know what your next question will be after you have heard the answer to your first? And even if you still want to know the same thing, why not give your conversational partner a chance to chime in? Fun science is a dialogue, not a series of mind-numbing monologues. A question that is boring you while you read it, or makes you impatient with wanting to answer to the first sentence, is too big.

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I already knew the answers to those questions. I was just tired of being the person who put forth so much effort into their answers that I wanted to challenge someone else. My NLP question was originally much shorter...so I talked to Steven and we discussed adding more context. You could subjectively say I went overboard, but my questions weren't that hard. You just misinterpret length of question = difficulty. –  user3433 Sep 4 at 22:16
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Also, I agree with Skippy in that if I get the punishment of a bunch of downvotes then democracy has already made it's choice - no need to meta this. Remember the "invisible hand" from economics? The lesson of the invisible hand is: DON'T MESS WITH THE INVISIBLE HAND! –  user3433 Sep 4 at 22:18
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@Taal I'm afraid you misinterpreted my advice, ... or I didn't manage to express myself properly. :) –  Steven Jeuris Sep 4 at 23:34
 
@what, great motivation behind this answer! I fully agree, but would rather see "If you try to foresee ..." in bold than Taal's example post. ;p –  Steven Jeuris Sep 4 at 23:35
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@Taal Your questions stands at (+3/-5). Also it's not because the majority feels a certain way, we shouldn't motivate on meta why. What makes some excellent points in this answer. –  Steven Jeuris Sep 4 at 23:38
 
Alot of the time...as selfish as this sounds...writing a long essay even if you guys didn't read it helped me clarify my thoughts or was just fun to write. @StevenJeuris , I purposefully exaggerated your advice :p which then actually caused me to end up in a pretty introspective place with NLP to where I couldn't stop midway. I'm providing content and if it ends up failing then alright...fine. It's not like I shot someone. –  user3433 Sep 5 at 2:03
 
I don't come here to stress out, I try to decompress. I like to experiment with things, so I did - lol. Here's one thing I find out: that when you put a 500+ bounty on something, someone who previously first responded with a wikipedia comment, downvotes as much as possible, and then complains about "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ANSWER," actually ends up giving a pretty damn good answer. One that will probably be read by someone who is really interested in the topic...however one that also apparently was partially copy and pasted from an article only written in German that they translated. @what :) –  user3433 Sep 5 at 2:09
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I think that experimenting with this site is a great thing to do. It will help us all find out what we want this site to be. But experimenting requires the will and ability to adapt to the results of your experiment. And in a community, the reactions of the other members are the results. There is nothing wrong with posting the questions that you posted, I only don't understand why you remain so stubbornly attached to their format. I had questions of mine deleted, too, and I'm still unhappy about that, but that's how it is when you are not alone in the world: you'll have to compromise. –  what Sep 5 at 7:40
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