@bilbo_pingouin I want to make a question about a flower calendar, and how it could be accurate enough to be useful, but I don't know to make it a narrow enough question.
I am creating a book where the character meets a situation where he stands on the small island and there is a fog so he cannot see where is the nearest shore and he needs to get there. Is there a way how to determine this? I need a logical explanation why he decided to go to the one side even if ...
Well I did answer it! I can see where people consider it plot, since the way it was asked was for a person, but I agree, a little editing and it is good to go.
It might be bad wording. If it was 'could you locate the shore in fog?' then it might be more on-topic, because maybe there are a lot of people who need to do this on a regular basis
I edited. The core of the question is about finding land in the fog What character is doing it and why isn't really relevant, thus (in my opinion) on topic. Take a look at the edit.
Gotta say, seems on-topic to me tbh. The gap between "Worldbuilding" and "Plotbuilding" is very small. After all, our worlds are for the most part a giant plot device that allow us to generate specific situations
I thought it was pretty close to on topic in it's original form, I just wasn't sure of the right wording to fix it.
Even just removing "I have a character" and replacing it with "How would someone" may have been enough
Hehe, So I was away for a bit, just saw @Samuels comment on the stared list about writing X-files. I have to disagree with him, if only because it would be closed as off topic under the character and plot generation reasons.
Now, if the Whooshists would lighten up a bit and allow themselves to have some fun, then we could probably do it ;)
@bilbo_pingouin They can be though. Opinion based, sure. Multiple good answers, yeah. But they be about world building still. It really depends on the question.
I mean, what if my plot was "I am going to build a world"?
Building Harlequin's Moon is a science fiction novel by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper. The novel is set in the distant future as a group of space travellers, marooned in an inhospitable planetary system, attempt to terraform a moon and create a sufficient civilisation on it to refuel their ship so they can continue to their original destination.
== Plot introduction ==
A couple of centuries from the present, artificial intelligences and nanotechnology are in widespread use in the Solar System and in some cases have caused disasters. Some people do not trust these technologies and plan a simpler...
that is of course true... it always depends on the question. And how it is formulated. But generally "how does [Joe/My character/you name it] do something in those circumstances" is typically not about worldbuilding
@AndyD273 then we are not concerned about how you are going to do it, but what you are going to build
Instead of "how does joe do this task?" it can be changed to "this is my world and my constraints, this is what I'm trying to do in my world with my current ideas, is there a better way?"
you aren't asking to change your world, you are asking how to move around it. So OT.
unless, and that might be the case for the fog question, your question is more about: there's that huge moutain in the middle of my lake, how did the society grow around it
so you are not asking about a single guy facing that issue... but the whole population. And that is part of the worldbuilding
IMO
if it is a situation that is faced by only one person, then it's only a plot and not WB
But it is a situation that could apply to anyone off a mainland anywhere. The problem isn't specific to a single character nor would the answer be. It could apply in any multitude of situations.
it doesn't matter who it could apply to, it doesn't have a long-lasting effect on anything
if it was part of a fogworld culture who travel the oceans, always finding land, then it could be on-topic. If you're asking about the fogworld itself, and if it can be navigated, then that could help you build a culture, so again it's on-topic
@James that's why I said that for that specific question, rewording it might do the trick. Because if you have many islands, and population living on them, they'll need to develop some system to orient themselves. And that's affecting the society and thus the WB.
@James I agree. It really is about the world, in that the population wants to know how the world works. Take Bowlturners answer. The wind direction is a (real)world thing
@TimB Yeah it is admittedly borderline but from my perspective it is asking about how the world functions as opposed to what a single person should do, thus on topic.
remember that questions gets put on-hold. And the new Story points to a link to how the question might be reopened, when the OP fixes their question and wording. That's IMO, how we should proceed. And not fix it ourselves, as we may deviate from the original intend of the OP.
So please add more details to the meta discussion about how to reopen story-based questions
@DaaaahWhoosh that might be a good exercice for meta... write the same question in various ways, and ask people to upvote and downvote whether they are on or off-topic in the given formulation
@bilbo_pingouin I'll go one further. I propose, as an exercise, getting a list of topics and get participants to to write their own examples of an off topic version and an on topic version
As we can see, there is some grey area in some of these, so some of the borderline questions will probably have a lot of both up and down votes
which doesn't tell us much, other than opinions vary
252 million years ago, Siberia erupted, releasing enough lava to fill in a volume anywhere between one and four million cubic kilometers. Any time someone thinks "large igneous province", the Siberian Traps seem to be the first thing on his mind.
But the actual largest igneous province is the O...
mods can migrate questions to any site on the network though
@AndyD273 I think that answered the migration question :). Things have to be MUCH more on topic on the other site or off topic here to be worth migrating
We don't really need it for a spelling correction or basic grammar, but editing someone else's question to "improve clarity" or whatever is a lot trickier and having some over site to double check my assumptions would be nice. Even if it just went back to the OP as a suggestion to approve or improve upon would be cool
@Hohmannfan Yeah, but as a highish rep user, it might be nice to be able to make an edit that doesn't commit right away, but instead shows up as a suggested edit for OP to see, but maybe not WB general
@DaaaahWhoosh I have been informed "Earth Science Stack Exchange is not interested in speculative scenarios." so it would be off topic over there.
This is yet another post to try to rationalise the limit between story-building (off-topic) and worlbuilding (on-topic).
A recent question:
How to determine where the nearest mainland shore is when standing on an island?
was first closed for story building, then edited and reopened. It started...
This is yet another post to try to rationalise the limit between story-building (off-topic) and worlbuilding (on-topic).
A recent question:
How to determine where the nearest mainland shore is when standing on an island?
was first closed for story building, then edited and reopened. It started...
@Hohmannfan nah, since I got the reviewer badge in December, I am not spending any priority on it. But I have the feeling that many people abandoned that queue.
@TimB I don't think it's always a subset of too broad, but I would be fine with its removal once we'd implemented some of the other risk factors, such as open-ended
I guess I should've spoken up before it got removed, but I get tired of disagreeing sometimes
this is a general problem, that all those discussions... are usually done between at max 10 persons... so it's hard to see any statistics...
but nevertheless if no one present a given point of view, it is ignored
so even if it means you have to disagree all the time, you should take the time to do it... so that people have a chance to see the other point of view. Especially those who "simply" vote and never express anything
I think that it is normal, and rather good that we are all different, and have different opinions. The main concept of SE is a rule of majority. But the majority can only appear when every view was heard. So it is very important to present different views. But it is as essential to accept that it is not shared.
I mean sometimes we have fundamental questions about the scope, and there's only one answer, with one point of view. And we are left to assume that that is the view of the community at large.
well that is understandable. Many (will) come from google, because they found a question similar to the question they had, and want to learn the answers provided. Many users are not dedicated to this community, but come because they have a question (whatever the reason), ask it get some answers, and never come back.
And a few are more dedicated to the site and thus are more active on meta, chat, etc.
I believe most of us went to SO to read some answers, ask some questions etc. But how many did take part of the community (via active meta and/or chat participation)?
@Hohmannfan It's possible. I was a pretty active WB user for over a year before I figured out that chat existed. And that's only because one of my answers had enough comments to fail over to chat
Then I figured out there were other rooms, and ended up here
there are probably different reasons... some are not aware. Some get to the site with their phones, which does not feature the chat. Some chats on other sites have bad reputation. Some people want to save time to concentrate on answering questions on main. Some newer users may feel intimidated. Some are already on other SE chats and don't have the time to be on that one as well...
@AndyD273 on meta, there are links on the right side... and on main there are right-side links to meta on various pages. And you get here in two clicks (StackExchange then Chat).
@bilbo_pingouin It took me forever to check out Meta too. I'm just saying it's not intuitive, especially if you aren't actively looking for it, or don't know it exists. If I'm just browsing through questions, I'll probably never see it.
@bilbo_pingouin Probably, but after finding the chat the site got a lot better, since I had a place to get advice on asking questions and other things. I don't see why it's considered right to hide it away in a locked room in the basement with a sign saying beware of leopard. Put it out in the open where anyone can at least see that it exists.
yet I don't believe that if you put it on the front page, with flashy neons and a sexy dude (today's IWD) inviting you to join in... all would. Not even a majority.
so... "yet I don't believe that if you put it on the front page, with flashy neons and a few kittens playing, and a person cordially inviting you to join in... all would. Not even a majority."