Time to Expressly Ban "I want to do X, Here's My Life Story..." questions?

Question

Inspired by talking to a fellow Academia user at SciPy:

Every SE site seems to have a particular genre of questions that are essentially unanswerable. I've come to believe that the questions we get wherein someone asks, with an accompany tale of their career, coursework to date, interests, etc. "How do get into a top program in X" or "Should I apply to the University of Y".

There questions have, in my mind, three problems:

1. Many are too specific - they only generalize to someone specific.
2. They're also too broad, because they're not actually asking an actionable question.
3. They're inherently unanswerable. The people who know (the admission committee of University of X's Department of Y) won't answer, and no one else knows.

While these get closed fairly frequently, should we consider adding language discouraging these types of questions in the FAQ?

Answer 1

I know I'm new here, but here's a proposed wording for a custom close reason that I hope will be helpful:

This question appears to be off-topic because it is not answerable by the Academia community; you may need to ask an advisor, an admissions committee, or some other internal group, as it is not answerable by the general public.

Or, alternately, if you don't want to mention specific groups ("But mine isn't on the list!"):

This question appears to be off-topic because it is not answerable by the Academia community; you may need to ask someone specific to your situation, as the general public cannot completely answer this question.

This, I think, covers the point of what you're asking. It's not really about the life story, but about the answerability of the questions.

It's generally alright on Stack Exchange to have a long question, as long as it's clear, readable, and answerable. This completes the trifecta of moderation tools that captures questions which fall out of these criteria.

Answer 2

The fewer unique criteria and guidelines we have, the better, in my opinion, If questions can already be handled under existing rules, then I'd rather proceed that way, rather than introducing special categories. "Don't ask this, don't do that," is not a god way to run a site like this.

Besides, such an approach will lead to some potentially useful questions being placed on hold just because of the way the question writer approached it, rather than being a bad question.

Answer 3

As a counterpoint to aeismail's statement "The fewer unique criteria and guidelines we have, the better", I would say that there are very good reasons for having somewhat redundant specific bans for common questions. The point of having rules in the first place is so that users, specifically new users, know what questions are in scope and which are not. The fact that we get so many of these questions clearly shows that new users are not able to tell that these questions are not in scope from the current rules.

I am very much in favor of adding a specific ban for this kind of question.

Answer 4

The problem with defining very specific bans is that it's very difficult to nail something down so well that it's easy to understand and apply it. There will always be a way to approach the ban so closely that it's hard to outright reject it, but it's still essentially the same type of question we are trying to avoid.

In general, where possible, it's better to define the community guidelines as principles that would also catch these problematic questions, rather than go down the path of writing a specific exclusion for each and every type of question we don't like.

Then, once the principles are defined, lead by example. Close these questions appropriately, add comments to teach others the principles that guide closing and encourage them to close such questions as well.

Over time the community will become aware of and accept that the principles cover certain types (or "smells" if you will) of questions and rather than having a hard line that you're constantly arguing with others about, you'll have a nice wide gray area that the community will define for you, and you shouldn't have to worry about it.

Great questions posed in this manner might succeed. Bad questions posed in this manner will generally be closed.

Everyone will be happy, and you won't be extending the battle over words for months and years, adding more and more language to the definition as you go along.

Teach them correct principles, and let them govern themselves.

Answer 5

When a user wants to do X and asks for help without giving life story, users automatically ask for details regarding the professional life as comments and the author edits the question and adds asked details. So it is essential for us users to read a life story or detailled paragraph to consider different aspects and give a good answer.

The part you refer to as life story of course can include unrelated information, however most of the time it also requires what potential answerers require to post useful advice. While the life story makes the question very specific, the key information in it (such as I am doing post doc, I am x years old, I have been an advisor for y years at z university z area) also makes the question also very general.