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My opinion is, as what was written on the defunct list of what can't be asked on SO, that legal questions aren't compatible with an international site where developers answers developers and where questions and answers are meant to be general enough to be reusable.

They might also be a legal threat to SO.

But there seems to be tags like or with many questions and, more importantly, those tags don't clearly precise that legal questions are out of scope. The mere presence of these tags without clear mention might be seen as an invitation to post to some users.

What's SO stance on this ? Am I right in systematically voting to close those questions as off-topic ? If so can we edit the tags so that we can point to their content when we vote to close the questions using them ?

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  • I doubt whether there's an actual legal threat to SO, or anybody else. Are there any actual real-world cases where faulty advice on a web site has actually lead to consequences for the site's operator, or the person who gave the advice?
    – Pekka
    Apr 18, 2013 at 11:36
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    @Pekka웃 I can't give a legal advice on this point.
    – Denys Séguret
    Apr 18, 2013 at 11:40
  • well played, Sir. :P
    – Pekka
    Apr 18, 2013 at 11:41
  • There might be unpleasant consequences for the person following legal advice from anonymous people on the internet.
    – Bo Persson
    Apr 18, 2013 at 11:43
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    There are probably legal consequences for any actual lawyer giving legal advice, though; they could be sued for malpractice. This means that any legal advice you get on the internet is worthless, because either the person giving the advice isn't a real lawyer, or, even worse, they're such a bad lawyer that they're willing to risk this without knowing the complete details of the case.
    – Wooble
    Apr 18, 2013 at 11:48
  • @Wooble yeah, advice in a professional capacity is the one case where giving it might be dangerous. But I'm having serious trouble imagining somebody giving bad advice somewhere on the Internet - maybe even under a nickname - and getting in trouble for it (unless it was given with provable malicious intent).
    – Pekka
    Apr 18, 2013 at 11:53

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Definitely don't close blindly. This needs careful evaluation.

On the first page in the legal tag, I spot at least one question that is perfectly fine:

I admit that most are probably indeed off-topic by today's standards, but please for goodness' sake, people, don't go f██ing deleting them all now that they're listed here. They contain relevant and valuable information. Maybe some of them could find a new home on programmers.SE? I'm not active enough there to judge.

Here's some that should be preserved in some form IMO:

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  • I fear that those that are too old simply won't be migrated to Programmers. But yeah, don't go and nuke everything with that tag.
    – Bart
    Apr 18, 2013 at 11:47

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