Evaluating the purpose of the Rules as Written tag

Speaking of which: Understanding the base mechanics of a game, as literally written, is incredibly valuable. It helps players, because you increase your understanding of what you're working with (and if it gets into absurdities, you understand its failures). Second, it helps as a designer, because you better understand the results of the design choices made.

right now there is no recognition of the very significant distinction between "how does this work?" and "how should this work?"

I do think that the default needs... a little nudging

@BraddSzonye ...the most objective questions on the site are a bad fit for a format that was initially designed around purely objective Q&A and banned subjective topics entirely?

@doppelgreener FWIW, when I tag with RAW it's because I don't want answers telling me to just houserule it, suggesting that asking the question makes me a bad GM, or even dismissing the question completely with 'why would you care about that?'.