Note: frame challenges are a specific kind of answer. And since no answers belong in comments, comments which are frame challenges should be flagged for deletion like any other comment-as-answer because it bypasses all the Stack's searchability, sortability, and rankability functions that make the Stack work.

@kviiri I am going to disagree. It should not be up to stackexchange members to decide what a person needs, especially if it goes against what the person is asking. The proper and respectable thing to do would be to answer the question asked instead of imposing one's own ideals on the asker. Looking at this description of "frame challenge" you provided it appears to appeals to the widest audience in order to get better votes.

@SevenofNine The very reason people ask questions is here is because they want expert advice. It's not about ideals, it's about what works and what doesn't. A respectable expert gives useful advice to the situation at hand, and often that useful advice is a frame challenge.

We infrequently get questions asking how to do something that is a very bad idea to do, based on general experience around what makes a healthy social & gaming group, and the asker appears to not be aware of how bad an idea it is. Those Q's get this sort of response. I'm fine with that. A health & fitness site that blindly advised people on how to do things that would get them hurt/injured would be not a very good site; it would do better by saying "don't do that, do this instead" & it would be irresponsible to do otherwise. In our capacity aiding social & game group health, we do the same.

@SevenofNine I get the impression there's a particular incident you have in mind. The Stack is very open to dealing with situations on a case-by-case basis, because we understand broad principles don't always apply equally to all cases. If you think a particular action needs attention, please make a meta post calling attention to it. The principle that sometimes an expert can offer a radically different perspective and that's okay, is unlikely to change--but we do know that not all such answers are respectful or useful, and we hold frame challenges to basic Stack guidelines like all answers.

@SevenofNine I am going to disagree. It should not be up to stackexchange members to decide what a person needs, especially if it goes against what the person is asking It's OK to be wrong. It's one way that we learn things ... to first discover through a variety of ways that we are wrong. To use a different analogy, a doctor doesn't just treat the symptom, the doctor tries to address the root cause.

@BESW There is not a particular incident, there are many incidents with one example given. I notice this happening in alot of questions and many of them it really should not be. Not to mention that the way that quite a few of the people doing it have been rude about how they go about it. I do not have enough flags to go through and mark each and every one.

@doppelgreener What makes a healthy social and gaming group is different for everybody and general experience can not be applied to every situation. Unless a complete history of the group and how they interact is asked for and given you can not know what is healthy for that group. it might not be a bad idea in that group. For example, in one campaign in a group i used to be in there was massive infighting and trying to kill one another due to conflicting alignments and everybody actually enjoyed it and it was fun. If one of us had come in asking advice on how to go about killing our fellow

players the answer would have been one of your "frame challenges", judging by the number of questions that are extremely similar to the theoretical question. Also, your "health & fitness site" example and Korvin's doctor example do not really work in this situation. There is too vast a difference between health & fitness or diseases and gaming. If you want me to work with the example though, in that situation it would be like the fitness site or the doctor telling people they should not go sky diving or surfing due to risk of injury.

@SevenofNine On the other hand, someone has actually asked that question and received many positive answers. (Then, related, a couple about doing that as the GM: one, two; and another about just enabling lethality whilst valuing players' time.)

@Seven If questions provide background, that will be taken into account. If they don't, it won't. I think that's to be expected. :)

@doppelgreener as far as I can tell the questions you linked are for npc's or dm's not players killing other players. The main goal of our campaign where the player fighting happened had nothing to do with the fighting.

@SevenSidedDie It should be taken into account, but it is not always. More over, you can not expect an entire history of a group and how the members interact to be given for a simple question, especially if the group has been together for months or even years. The point is that people are not going to fit into a nice little box. In your answer you mentioned that everybody was "thinking humans" and "not robots" but following a herd and giving answers based on you what the majority thinks is right or thinks that a person needs is robotic.

@SevenofNine In your example campaign, everyone was enjoying themselves and having fun so you didn't need to come here for help with it. Folks often arrive here—and ask questions—when they're not having fun.

@SevenofNine A whole group history is rarely necessary. For example, your example can (and has — see doppel's links!) work here just fine without getting an overwhelming “don't do that”. All the question needs to do is say “hey, how do I kill a fellow player with [xyz details]? We're a D&D group who loves some surprise PvP, and I want to gank my thief friend real good next adventure…” See? It's not hard. When questions leave that out? They get different answers. We're not mind readers.

@HeyICanChan if you read the example it was a theoretically question of somebody coming here to ask how to go about killing another player, not about having or not having fun.

@SevenSidedDie i did read the links and found that they do not apply to the example. Also, it was only that specific campaign. We have had plenty of campaigns where there should be no fighting between players. It is all important. You are not mind readers, no, but neither are askers. They do not know what and how much to say so that they get the right answers without getting a million useless ones and a lot of strife.

@SevenofNine I think you're going to have to be more specific when you say that askers are not getting helpful answers. You're trying to make the case to established users who, when you say that, are comparing your words to the (literally) tens of thousands of well-helped questions they can see on the site. If there's a problem, vaguely describing it isn't going to accomplish your goal — you'll need to actually show us where the problem is, rather than assume it's obvious. Can you point to exactly where the problem is happening?

@SevenofNine More generally, at this point I'm not sure what you need from us (the site community). We've presented how the site works and I don't know what else anyone can say. It seems to me like you're running headlong into the intentional structure of the site, and while I'm trying to help by point out why that's happening, it doesn't seem like I'm actually helping. I'm going to step back a bit but please feel free to ping me if a new or different factor comes to the fore.

@SevenofNine The important difference is between "I have a problem and want to fix it by shooting myself in the leg, how do I do it?" and "We have a game where we shoot each other in the legs, help me do it better." Means versus ends.

My mistake on the earlier comment -- that wasn't a player-vs-player question. You can check the player-vs-player tag for questions about those interactions.

RE: "if you read the example it was a theoretically question of somebody coming here to ask how to go about killing another player, not about having or not having fun." There's already one link to embracing play styles, but here it is again. Nonetheless, as per my comment on the question, if the question is My buddy's cool with me shooting him. So, head or gut? it'd be pretty darn irresponsible of a good answer not to say, at some point, that shooting anyone is generally a bad idea even if your buddy is cool with it.