Worldbuilding Meta

I would like to draw attention to one and, eventually, more questions that I've posted that have community wiki answers. The Bounty system isn't really designed for that, but it's the most obvious way to do it. The bounty text would clearly state that it's a fake bounty, that no new answers will...

Open question. I'm curious why some people make the word "edit" in their comments a hyperlink to the edit action. Particularly why they do when responding to users who are not exactly new to the site and who presumably know where the edit button is located. I'm also curious if I am the only one w...

I have been working on a story for some time similar to Andy Weir’s Hail Mary Pass that involves deep space observation in search of a probe target and as very often happens I have to use three of my five allowed tags to express one concept: space exploration. I don’t need to do any space-travel ...

The overlap between aerodynamics and flight is far too small to link these categories as synonyms. Only a small subset of things which fly (in fictional worlds) rely on a subset of aerodynamic principles (lift and drag). I think it’s pretty clear that racing haulers across the arctic tundra, rac...

I've noticed that some users on Worldbuilding Stack Exchange include images and text in theor posts, either questions or answers, that are sourced from elsewhere and are not their own work. As a moderator, I've been required to handle copyright claims against users on this site who have used imag...

Regarding this answer, which I'll duplicate here in the case of people who can visit Meta but can't see deleted content. There is a significant debate about this going on in the scifi community. We have to take a step back from robots and talk about machine intelligence, or AI. A robot is just a...

Regarding this question, in light of this policy. I think we can all agree in principle that AI generated text has no real place here in Worldbuilding, with the possible exception of queries about AI in a fictional world context, and now that we've had some examples of purportedly AI generated a...

Stack Exchange has historically distinguished itself from forums by following a very matter-of-fact philosophy: questions, answers, comments, and no chit-chat. While this helps folks get answers to their questions, it can limit the site's efficacy in other areas: free-flowing discussions, informa...

Recently, I decided to clean up some old comments that should not be needed. I decided to go for low hanging fruits first, and went for comments starting with "welcome" which either did not offer any more information other than the greeting, or they did ask for some information but the post was u...

There is a LOT of information in the world and unlike the days of yore, it's available instantly. Most of that information is good. Some of it is bad. Some of it is really bad. But even if we only consider the good information — there is a risk to worldbuilders. We are sometimes led to believe th...

We are receiving questions asking for us to factually invent an idea or technology with increasing frequency. The questions are usually asked by people with insufficient education but a strong desire to join the ranks of professionals who have successfully written novels of the hard science genre...

The structure of this website makes it every difficult to speak to people on the other side of a set of moderation buttons, leading to confusion and infuriation. This is one such situation where peer-reviewed science in a frame challenge was unilaterally declared "a low quality post." Apparently,...

I noticed that we have both the 'strong-force' and 'weak-force' tags, both of which I feel should be absorbed by the 'nuclear' tag. I also noticed we have both the 'radioactive' and 'radiation' tags. In this case, I feel the 'radioactive' tag should be absorbed by the more popular 'radiation' tag...

The tag info for the aliens tag states: "For questions about a different and uncharacteristic species or object that has come to the world from another world. NOT for questions about extraterrestrials in their native environment." This excerpt (particularly the second sentence) does not seem to a...

Just curious if the Factory Floor will be unfrozen, or if we've just given up on it ever being a thing again?

A great many questions on this site are regularly closed for being off-topic. Usually, it's a new user asking for broader creative ideas or something deemed too subjective to be specifically answerable. But summarily closing the question with only a link to the help center page seems very discour...

I think that the "1 day rule" - a unofficial guideline where a user should wait at least a day before accepting an answer - should be an actual suggestion, and not just "unofficial". This could be done in two ways I can think of: 1. Help Center / Tutorial Page New users are the ones to most likel...

Unsure if this should be asked here or some other SE, but I couldn't find any reference to this in the Help Centre. This answer posted to the WB stack shows 0 reputation, but I was notified via the Achievement menu—and it still shows this a week later—a +8 change to reputation. There are no other...

It is evident that many of the people who use it either don't read the guidance, or are very confused about the scientific accuracy of a lot of popular media. I suspect they think they know what "hard science" means, and use the tag blindly. We might replace it with, for example: scientifically-p...

I define "vexatious questions"1 as a series of questions from the same user that are minor iterations on a theme or idea. The first question in the series contributed to worldbuilding. The rest of them are, for practical purposes, duplicates of the first and are not contributing to worldbuilding....

A few days after I posted this question, I hitting upon this potential answer to it and posted it to get feedback on it, but the only response to it was strictly to tell me how to use superscripts (I hadn't figured out how when I originally submitted the answer); absolutely nobody seemed interest...

UPDATE: Amber's original question has been undeleted and the new question closed as a duplicate. It looks like that new question has since been deleted (honestly, it didn't need to be this complicated...). The old question has been updated with the new question's text, so to experience the fullne...

I believe that one (or perhaps several) of the votes toward closing my most recent question constitute an abuse of voting privileges rather than having legitimate issues with the question. Certainly, some were legitimate, as before editing I was asking about several different, albeit related, top...

I asked about how much damage/the area of effect of a 1/72 cockroach nuke a week or so ago. I got several answers, but It would have been preferable if it stayed open. Here is the link: How big would the AoE/destruction of a nuke 72 times smaller than normal be assuming it still works at that sca...

A recent question asking for advice about what the boss in their video game should be tagged their question video-games. The tag has no summary and no wiki. The first question tagged with the tag was a submission to the Anatomically Correct Series back when we allowed video game creatures to be p...

This question may be part of the anatomically correct series, although as a new user I'm not sure. In a Earth-like setting, what differences from real slime molds would this organism have? The defining characteristics of this organism are: living underground (a few centimeters or more) covering ...

I am currently working on (and on the nth revision of) a world map. Initially, the centre was supposed to be the North Pole but I later switched it to a standard equator-centred orientation. Legend (in order of appearance): Coloured box + number = country Mountains = mountain range Red dots = a...

Among my various rejected edits, one particularly stood out: the now-synonymized sophont tag. I was unable to suggest synonymization, so I did the next best thing: edit the tag to accurately reflect the term. I assume someone with privileges came along and synonymized it, and my edit got axed by ...

Recently, I've been working on the tag wikis. I keep a lot of tabs open when working on projects like this. After a few rejects, I got auto-banned. Weather or not some of those rejects should have happened at all is another thing entirely, but it is what it is now. The problem is, I am still able...

Recently, I've been going around and creating tag wiki excerpts. At first, I was wondering about the usefulness of such work-but after a few accepts, it seemed like a good idea. After a few (not-so) stupid blunders, I got autobanned from editing. I know, a tragedy. Please, save your gallons of te...

A recent question asked what weapons a society would use if magic (specifically a mage) could stop the ignition of gunpowder and similar explosives. It was a different spin on a popular type of question... You find yourself on a world with no gunpowder...don't ask why...or how you know that ther...

Relevant post: How much and how powerful would a "phlebotinium" bomb launched from orbit be to create an artificial sea? A new user, @JustKherty, has posted a question about a publicly accessible world, claiming to own that world. Normally this would fall into our 3rd-party/commercial world prohi...

I proposed a series of minor edits on this question earlier today; and as the title says, was rejected for deviating from the author's intent. I have a vague idea of which portions of my edit probably were the culprit, but I can't be sure, and submitting another edit suggestion doesn't seem like ...

This question The comment from L-Dutch states: "The first line is at most a comment to the OP's question. The rest, being based on nothing that the OP asked, is not an answer" However, this ignores what the OP said: "Say hypothetically, an entire American airbase with many extremely modern aircra...

I have great appreciation for the people who regularly help in the Sandbox. I'd especially like to thank @Tortliena, @Sphennings and @VLAZ for helping so much. But the Sandbox could use more help. Several questions have languished waiting for more input and one has only had input from me over the...

The question: How would a primitive people recharge energy weapons in a hard science fiction setting? Pretty straight-foward. Author is asking how a primitive society could recharge energy weapons, with the stipulation that a small solar panel is not sufficient. The answer, therefore, is that he ...

I recently posted a question about simulations and how they can end. My account also didn't let me sign in. What happened to these?

I am disgusted by the way users have been asking disgusting questions about slavery. Something that should not be considered as a means or concept of any monstrous ideas as it has been explored here! People were tortured, mutilated, arrested, separated from their families, when they didn't die tr...

In a comment to a recent question, @Nosajimiki made a good point. The OP had not tagged the question hard-science or science-based, so I chastised other respondents for taking a hard-line Real World stance about the OP's premise based on the idea that Real Life cannot be an overriding limitation ...

I've been contemplating the things that make us want to close questions. On many questions, I vacillate between something being opinion based or story based or too vague, and this is an attempt to help nail down which arguments apply to which kinds of questions. Some questions want to explore an ...

Community discussion has been taking place on WB Meta concerning our position on AI generated content: Should we ban posts using ChatGPT or similar software? Because of the outcome of the discussion and the considerable workload dealing with these posts by Community and elected Moderators, the fo...

The full and official verbiage defining how the Anatomically Correct tag should be used can be found here: Anatomically Correct Series. But there are some aspects of it that I think deserve some minor revisions. Suggested Changes 1 & 2 Creature descriptions (1)should include important behavioral...

I think the question is pretty self-explanatory, so where can I ask more general world-building questions, such as style or general how to build a world kind of questions?

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year. As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web: We designed the Stack Exch...

Worldbuilding.SE legend has it that the idea of Storybuilding.SE was once discussed, but at the time the rules of Stack Exchange were so rigid that such a Stack could never succeed or even graduate from Area 51. Time has passed. It's been proven that people completely ignore rules and that few pe...

I once carefully worldbuilt a computer system, how it would have a distributed filesystem with redundant backups, a public key system for identity, etc. etc. Then when I was building the next world, I realised I could just copypaste the computer system from the last one. So there's a cyberpunk wo...

Suddenly while browsing worldbuilding stack exchange questions this question came to mind. Although opinion based and story based questions are discouraged on WB stack, some still receive answers. These answers propose opinion/story based solution. It is debatable these answers could be worthy of...

totally imaginary and random question examples: "yada yada blah blah what about bones made of x material?"" "what about water but purple?" "what about deserts but with invasive plants in it?" Comments "downvoted, please do your research, you should know bones are made of calcium, stack exchange i...

-Vote to close question because it's ''opinion based'' or -Don't answer with opinions. There's two options, but option 1 has no reason to exist

Latest offender: Need counters for a near perfect Anti Thermal and Kinetic armor system in a near future setting Another example: Could alien organisms evolve to utilize Thermoelectric cooling(the Peltier effect) to cool themselves down? And another: How could my solar-powered fairies exist in o...