Poll: additional question types that should or shouldn't be added to help/on-topic

Question

Today, I saw that Help Center/on-topic has this text:

• Proofreading ("Is this right?", "Are there any mistakes?"), unless a specific source of concern is clearly specified. See below for hints on checking existing texts.
• Writing advice (see Writers.SE instead) or critique requests.

I've been wanting "no ghost-writing" to complement "no proof-reading" for a long time now indeed. Glad to see it was added, and more along with it.

This sparked me to ask this question about adding additional categories to that page:

• transcription requests, broadly ("what did he say at 1:12:36 of this movie?"). This is different to "what kind of accent does this have" or other phonemic or phonetic questions (which are on-topic so long as they're about English phonemics and phonetics).

• interpretation of lyrics, poetry, or otherwise investigation of semantics (not structure) in deliberately ambiguous or creative contexts. These questions can be on on-topic if the work in question has attracted a body of scholarly attention, such that people reading answers can have at least some confidence in their relative authority (which helpfully excludes the most common problematic category: the interpretation of modern pop music lyrics).¹

• word or phrase comparisons, unless the relevant definitions are quoted and referenced by the questioner, who then expresses more nuanced doubts with specific reference to the cited definitions (no bald "which is bigger, a realm or a dominion?"-style questions). We might have some tag burnination to do here.

What do you think? To be most effective, here's how I propose responses to this meta-question be structured:

• upvotes mean "I agree with the spirit of this question but am not commenting on the details", and downvotes mean "I disagree with the spirit of this question but am not commenting on the details"
• each answer should focus on one off-topic area and either:
  • argue against the inclusion of one of the above categories; upvotes on such answers are interpreted as "keep these types of questions on-topic", and downvotes mean "no, these types of questions are off-topic and should be explicitly noted in the Help Center".
  • support the inclusion of one of the above categories, and potentially suggest improvements to the language which will ultimately be presented to new users in the Help Center. Votes on these answers should be interpreted in the opposite sense to the previous bullet.
  • propose a (single) new category of off-topic questions and language used to describe it in the help center. Votes are to be interpreted in the same way as the previous bullet.
  • be a meta-answer and respond to the question broadly (e.g. "I think the Help Center page is long enough already, and already prohibits your categories anyway"; "Clearly you hate kittens and probably steal candy from babies"). Votes on these answers have their usual interpretation on Meta.

Any feedback welcome. Feel free to be brutal.

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¹ _{I believe these topics are already excluded by the current language, but I want to have something explicit about lyrics and poetry to point askers to. Suggestions for other concrete subjects, which like poetry & lyrics; are open to interpretation and go to authorial intent, and are therefore distinct from answerable meaning-in-context questions are welcome.}

Answer 1

Off-topic: Transcription Requests.

We have had discussions about this before, particularly at Exactly WHY is this question Off Topic? Or not?, and as a couple of answers there state, a transcription request is too localized, unlikely to help any future visitors, unsuitable for a broader, more helpful response than "the dialogue was 'X'", and effectively unsearchable even if it were potentially helpful.

Answer 2

Off-topic: Questions about Interpersonal Skills.

Randomly selected examples:
How do we refer to body odour delicately?
Polite alternative for "none of your business"

Some questions like these were trying hard to fit into the ELU scope, since at the time there may not have been a better place to ask these.

We have a new community called "Interpersonal Skills" for such questions now.

The scope is being discussed at the moment. We'll update it here when it's ready, and add a proper help text.

Answer 3

Regarding interpretation of song lyrics or poetry

This is merely a suggestion related to the wording of the "song lyrics / poetry" topic. Please downvote brutally if you disagree.

According to the Literature.SE help page, they welcome interpretation as defined here:

Topics that will most likely be considered on-topic include:

1. Questions about how to interpret a specific scene, quote, theme, plot point, etc. in a work of literature.

So my recommendation is to borrow their language and add to our off-topic list:

• Song lyrics or other textual interpretation. For questions about how to interpret a specific scene, quote, theme, or plot point in a work of literature, visit Literature.SE

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Wait, is this always off-topic here?

It's been suggested in comments that we might need more clarity on when and whether these sorts of questions actually are off-topic to an extent that would warrant a help center note. I won't try to answer that here, though I agree with Dan Bron's summary in the second category suggested:

interpretation of lyrics, poetry, or otherwise investigation of semantics (not structure) in deliberately ambiguous or creative contexts. These questions can be on on-topic if the work in question has attracted a body of scholarly attention, such that people reading answers can have at least some confidence in their relative authority

This answer simply addresses how I would suggest wording the proposed bullet on the help page. It seems to me that "Song lyrics or other textual interpretation" indicates that these questions are off-topic when the question is focused on interpretation in particular. Whether or not this is a solid enough rule to be etched into the help center seems like a valid question. I will simply link to some of the relevant Meta posts on this topic:

• To what extent is analyzing poetry or verse off-topic?

• Meaning in the context of a poem, Off Topic?

• Are interpretations of song lyrics, poems or other creative works on-topic?

• Why is the meaning of song lyrics off topic

Answer 4

Off-topic: Ghostwriting

Ghostwriting should be explicitly noted as off-topic in the same bullet as proofreading (as its obverse).

A good indicator that an OP wants ghostwriting is the phrase "What's the best way to express....". A particularly egregious concrete example is:

How would you speak and elaborate that "not all the synonyms can be replaced in some sentences".

What would be your competitive sentences examples?

Almost all "help me write this email to my boss" questions fall into this category (or into the off-topic interpersonal skills category). Those are even more sensitive to context we have no access to, including the person's boss, their relationship, the culture of his organization, and the regional dialect and register of his location.

These questions are primarily-opinion based as creative exercises where there's no right answer. The search space of "all possible phrasings" is too large, and it is the responsibility of the asker to constrain the problem to something small, practical, and objective (like single-word-requests and phrase-requests).

Answer 5

Off-topic: Interpretation of deliberately or accidentally ambiguous language

A common example is asking whether a range given in a text (numeric range, date range) is inclusive or exclusive of the named boundaries. For example, this question of the admissible dates for a contest submission.

These questions are primarily-opinion based, by definition. They aren't questions of English, and for most questions of this type, which are aimed at solving some practical problem (e.g. dates when a contest is open), the best and often only solution is to ask the author of the text in question, or his agents.

Answer 6

Off-Topic: Matters that Involve Specialised Substantive Knowledge

People occasionally come to this site to seek explanations of various passages that they find difficult to understand, without pausing to consider whether their difficulties are due to some feature of English language or to the complexity of the subject matter. Difficulties of the latter kind often arise when somebody attempts to read a text that is written for people with advanced knowledge of a particular field of science or scholarship, without having such knowledge. Resolution of such difficulties requires that the person be provided with substantive education in the relevant field, and providing such education is outside the scope of tis site.

(It should be noted that the form of a question is not dispositive as to whether the question is really about the language or about some substantive subject matter; a question about anything can be worded as question about the language. Somebody asking ‘What does the word electricity mean in English?’ (without further explanation) is effectively asking what is electricity, and is much more likely to profit from consulting an introductory physics textbook than a dictionary.)

Answer 7

Off-topic: interpretation of legalese

We should absolutely not be offering users legal advice.

Such questions should be directed to their attorney or, if of more general interest, to Law.

These questions should be closed with alacrity, to avoid less-experienced users posting possibly damaging legal advice which the OP is no position to assess the authority of. This is regardless of whether the answerer sets out with "IANAL, but" or other meaningless disclaimers.