I've read several questions here about whether a certain question is too hypothetical. A nice rule of thumb I read at one of these was that in a not-too-hypothetical question (i.e. an acceptable question), it should be possible for OP to supply additional details if queried.
That's somewhat helpful but a bit more guidance would be helpful. I need to read some non-gray-area hypothetical questions that were closed or should have been closed.
If you can't find any specific examples, then it's okay to make something up (if it's realistic).
This came up as I was reading some of the questions written by a medium inexperienced participant who recently posed a Meta question about participation by non-academics. I realized that I don't have any personal experience yet evaluating hypothetical questions to determine whether they're well posed.
Edit to provide context. I was trying to decide whether How to deal with consequential rounding errors when verifying the works of others? was on topic. I noticed that Help says To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where … you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened? but I also realized I don't know how hypothetical is too hypothetical. I read some Meta material about this, so now I have the theory (see above), but without some practical examples showing where to draw the line I don't feel confident about determining when to vote to close because of being too hypothetical. Guidance would be much appreciated.
