I put up a question earlier today regarding the structure of California agricultural subsidies. My goal is to understand potential political issues with an obvious alternative to the current system. This type of question would be reasonable on other SE sites. For example, a science SE site can an...

From time to time I see first comments under new questions that rather than suggest improvements or ask for clarification, feel to me to be more idle chit-chat with the effect of directing attention away from the question and instead towards a parallel conversation or even towards the commenter t...