Does the community think that we need a 'grammar, but too basic for ELU: almost any book on grammar will answer this clearly' close-vote reason?

Question

A recent question on ELU:

• Is a noun always preceded by a determiner?

I believe that this is so easily answered by looking at virtually any book on grammar (it could be argued that even dictionaries will suffice, providing countless counterexamples in example sentences) that the question doesn't even belong on ELL. (Detailed discussion about when zero, indefinite, definite and null articles, and bare role NPs etc are already available in other strings.)

Other recent (as regards related topics) 'too basic, but not (reasonably) answerable by consulting a dictionary' questions, either still open or closed for dubious reasons, include:

• "aged nine of ten" meaning? [closed for 'not in scope' catch-all]
• Is it correct to say 'I make more spent'? [closed for 'needs more details']
• What's the correct: 'bread with cheese' or 'bread and cheese'? [migrated to long-suffering ELL]
• 'Remember of Majesty': is this title correct?

In narrowing the scope of the 'insufficient research' CV reason to solely dictionary resources, I argue that overly basic non-semantics questions are not addressed / discouraged. Does the community agree that we need a 'a question on grammar, but too basic for ELU: almost any book on grammar will answer this clearly' close-vote reason?

edit in response to prompt: I can only repeat the request for debate about the provision of a 'too basic' CV-reason for non-semantics questions. Heartspring puts this argument well:

Araucaria said we can't use the new reason to close grammar questions; this post is saying that we still need a way to close them. [jsw29's], my, and Catija's concerns about localization all got upvoted, but they weren't addressed or solved, and I think Laurel's argument against it is "The internet is filled with crap, so why are we so eager to have our users consult it to solve their problems?" But the fact remains that [as the OP noted elsewhere] "we need some way to distinguish ELU standard questions, genuine ELL standard questions, and 'do it all for me' questions."

If no questions on grammar are now considered unsuitable here, the reason for setting up ELL seems to have been discarded. And I'm sure the majority of regular users on ELL would consider some questions too basic.

.....................

In response to Andrew Leach's request for a substitute CV reason, I offer (feel free to suggest other basic grammars; this costs about £3.50) (and I would not recommend it for advanced questions suitable for ELU):

• Questions that can be easily answered by consulting a reputable online dictionary or a basic grammar such as 'Collins Easy Learning Grammar and Punctuation' should be closed with this reason unless the question includes an explanation of why the chosen dictionary / basic book on grammar wasn't helpful. When using this close reason, consider providing a link to a relevant reference in a comment.

Answer 1

As I understand it, the mods intentionally switched to the new "answered by a dictionary" close reason to prevent "easy" questions about grammar from getting closed. See the thread announcing that change.

Who, exactly, is hurt by easy questions being asked and answered? Are we worried that we might seem too helpful or too welcoming? If you don't want to answer questions because they're too easy to be worth your time, you are welcome to not answer them, and to instead spend your time answering more interesting ones. If we keep getting the same easy question over and over, we should answer one of them and close future ones as duplicates.

Moreover, "easiness" is so subjective that this leads to questions getting closed, then reopened, then closed again in cycles that benefit nobody. Whatever our guidelines are for askers, they should at least be capable of being made clear and unambiguous. The close button is not a way of expressing your dislike for a question; it's to deal with questions that are, by their very nature, incapable of being given a good answer, meaning that ELU can provide no value to the asker.

In fact, I'd say that we only have the "dictionary" close reason, not because those questions are too easy, but because we don't want our site to just turn into a giant dictionary.

I also want the question you mentioned: "Is a noun always preceded by a determiner?" There is, presumably, a reason why the asker got confused about that point. In particular: many grammar resources online will tell you about the existence of a so-called "zero article" or "zero determiner." They'll say that, in a sentence like "Raccoons are friendly," the word "raccoons" actually does have a determiner: it's just the invisible "zero determiner." Such resources actually will tell you--or at least imply--that every noun phrase contains a determiner, whereas others will tell you that such noun phrases simply lack a determiner entirely. This could be a source of genuine confusion, and, if asked to clarify, I suspect we would have uncovered that there is a legitimate question here, one that reliable online resources will disagree about.

The difference between ELU and ELL is not the ease of the questions being asked. The difference is one of target audience; ELU is intended for use by native speakers, or proficient non-native ones, whereas ELL is intended for those currently learning English. Such audiences require a different kind of answer, typically one focused on making the asker a proficient speaker rather than explaining the structure of a language of which the asker and answerer already have a shared knowledge. In general, I think it's best to only migrate a question to ELL if (a) the asker describes themself as a learner, or if (b) it's the sort of question that a native speaker would be very unlikely to ask.

Questions about whether to use "a" or "the" in a particular context are a good example; native speakers rarely have questions about this, but it can be quite hard to explain the rules around article use to a speaker whose first language lacks them. That said, questions from non-native speakers that demand uniquely complex or sophisticated responses may belong here. One of our most upvoted answers of all time--Araucaria's post on whores and horse--came from an asker who described themself as a non-native speaker and was clearly not asking something a native speaker would be confused about.

Answer 2

That the answerable-by-a-dictionary reason for closing does not cover even the most basic matters of grammar was pointed out by Heartspring less than an hour after Laurel first proposed its introduction. Since then, that has been commented upon by a number of people who were involved in the discussion of the new reason, and was also the subject matter of a separate question, albeit without any sort of a consensus emerging.

There are four possible reactions to noticing that the new reason does not cover trivial questions about grammar.

(1) That is as it should be: no question about grammar should ever be closed on this site as too basic.

(2) A separate closing reason for such questions should be created.

(3) The answerable-by-a-dictionary reason should have added to it a clause about trivial questions about grammar, so that it becomes something like: answerable by a dictionary or a basic textbook of English grammar.

(4) We should have a general this-is-too-obvious reason for closing (that does not attempt to separately list different ways of being too obvious).

The first option is favoured by Araucaria, herisson, and those who upvoted their contributions to the earlier discussion of this matter. I hope that some of them will come to present their arguments on this page. (Incidentally, I think that this question should have been closed as a duplicate, and the discussion continued where it was started, so that people do not have to repeat here what they have already said elsewhere. It, however, does not seem likely that this will happen.)

The second option would be, as Mr Leach pointed out in the comments, nearly impossible to implement because of the systemwide limitation on the number of distinct reasons for closing.

A number of us (Heartspring, Cerberus, myself, and those who upvoted and/or commented favourably on our contributions) favour some version of the last two options.

Between the last two, I would prefer (4). Disjunctive reasons for closing, as (3) would be, are confusing and frustrating to those whose questions are closed. A closing banner that says something like 'Your question is closed because of X or Y' leaves one wondering 'Well, is it X or Y? If it is Y, why do they mention X, which does not apply to my question?'

Moreover, if we were to choose (3) and add answerable-by-a-grammar-textbook to answerable-by-a-dictionary, we would probably discover that there are other ways in which a question could be too trivial and that the disjunction needs to be even more complex. A generic this-is-too-obvious reason will cover all of them, without our having to anticipate them.

Answer 3

No, such a close reason should not exist.

Beginner grammar books can be wrong

Even with simple grammar questions, the idea that "almost any book on grammar will answer this clearly" is liable to be false, at least if we append '...and accurately' to the end. John Lawler wrote

Better make sure you add a link to a real "beginner's grammar book" with real English grammar in it. There aren't that many, and textbooks are always wrong. That's where we get the questions beginning "We know that ...", which are always silly and don't have any answers. How does one deal with widespread official ignorance? – John Lawler, Sep 9, 2023 at 13:53

The question about determiners actually started by saying "I have studied a grammar rule that states that". Unhelpfully, it provided no source, but it's entirely believable that the questioner encountered a real grammar guide (even a book!) that really said something wrong or misleading. So there is room to doubt whether closing the question for the reason that "almost any book on grammar will answer this clearly" would be true or helpful to the original poster, although it might be satisfying to close voters who just want to get rid of questions deemed uninteresting and beneath the dignity of this site.

Simple questions can have complex answers

Taking the provided example, 'Is a noun always preceded by a determiner?' is not an inherently trivial topic. An answer could go into the determiner-phrase vs. noun-phrase controversy in syntax.

We could argue that's not what the original poster was asking about, to which we could argue in response that the Q&A's on this site are not just for the original posters, but for anyone who comes across the question in the future. I don't think it's inappropriate for someone to post an answer that addresses the issue that prompted the question, but that also goes into further depth than the questioner may have realized existed. Plenty of times, someone might ask a question on a math or physics stack exchange site without understanding all of the higher-level concepts that are involved in the thing that they're asking about.

I do think there are potential issues in some cases with reinterpreting a question to be about something that it didn't originally ask about at all, but which an answerer finds more interesting. But my biggest concern in that regard is about well-meaning edits to the question itself (often intended I think to try to save it from the 'overly basic question' close-vote squad) which may distort the original question or inaccurately 'put words in the mouth' of the original poster. In this case, though, the original question clearly does ask for an explanation of the grammar of determiners, so I don't think an answer that gave more information about determiners than needed to address the original example would be going off-topic.

A small amount of context for a long-running discussion

The question of whether some questions are too simple has come up perennially on Stack Exchange sites. Here are some Meta SE posts with answers that bring up some of the issues: Has a consensus been reached on whether or not some questions are too simple?, Introduce a "general reference" close reason.

Answer 4

In theory, by the time someone has earned the privilege to cast a close vote, they are aware of what is generally on-topic or off-topic for the community. If someone believes a question is off-topic, they will pick whatever reason is closest to their reasoning regardless of how it is worded or how actionable the advice provided by it is.

I don't think a new close reason is merited unless it is going to offer the author a way to bring their question on-topic. If the question is being closed as "answerable by general reference" (essentially), how can an author bring it on-topic? There's not much value in making the distinction between a dictionary, a grammar book or some other reference unless you believe the question can be salvaged.

If it's closed and someone disagrees with the reason, then maybe it merits a meta discussion which would probably happen regardless of the specific wording of the close reason. Usually though, most people will recognize it as off-topic, and the author is just a drive-by and not really engaged. I doubt the community would bother to reopen a question just to choose a different close reason unless a duplicate was found.

There are many reasons why a question may be out of scope for a site in a way that can't be corrected to bring it in scope. They don't all need to be enumerated.