Should we switch from marking a question as opinion-based into marking an answer as opinion-based?

Question

I think that possibility to mark questions as opinion-based is problematic for few reasons:

1. It is just hard or impossible to predict if question is opinion based.

   • asker has to predict what other users would do (because "opinion-based" means that answers will be opinion-based)
   • there is no hard rules for when question will be marked as opinion-based, i.e. I have searched / asked about this (unfortunately, the question was deleted, but it was rather clear that I would not receive answer on question "what to do to make it less likely that question will be marked as opinion-based?" - It was deleted as duplicated with this one: How to properly use 'ethics' tag to avoid closing the question? and based on his answer, it is clear that it is impossible to speak about rules in the case of opinion-based mark.

2. It is unfriendly for especially new users who do not have bad intentions.

   • I remember a situation from SO when a user asked (I don't remember details) what should he use to host an R / Shiny application. And if I'm not wrong, he used the unfortunate word "Should". For me it was (taking into account the body of question) clear that he just don't know what solutions exist and he is looking for any help to at least be able to start with this topic. I tried to change this question into something like "What should I use to be able to..." to highlight the fact that he want to know any solution (technology) which can do something for him. I know that this user could do this in his own, but (1) he was a new user; (2) look at the point 1: for him feedback that "it is opinion-based" was not clear enough (the same as for me often).

3. It is difficult to reconcile with questions about ethics. I mean - in my opinion, it is easy to reconcile, but it needs additional work to rewrite the question not because (let me say that) the question is bad, but because it is not clear for a lot of people that it is about ethic.

   • As an example, I saw this question on politics site today: Should Western governments encourage corporations to terminate remote services from Russia? with the very interesting comment (by @CJDB):

   Questions asking whether governments should or shouldn't do something are not a good fit for this website which is focussed on objective questions and answers

   And I was thinking if it is possible to improve the question and decided to use this question title: Is a war sufficient argument to say it is morally good to encourage corporations by Western governments to terminate remote services from Russia? And what I want to say is that - if I'm right - only what was needed was to show explicitly that this is about "is X morally good taking into account context Y". It was - as I believe - not only the intention of asker, but it was also the standard question about ethic.

I would like to summarize all of this with the thesis that the current mechanism feels injustice for askers and should make responsible for answers not asker, but responders.

Then I would like to ask (let me use this word): should we make the responsible party be the responders?

We could imagine that only answers could be marked as opinion-based, i.e. when for example there are no supporting facts, citations and when we feel that this answer is based on, well, nothing. And I think that then a lot of questions (recently marked as opinion-based) could be just marked as duplicated (i.e. if the asker does not ask about specific context, i.e. not "is this code time-efficient?", but "is this code good?", then we can be almost sure that the same question was asked at least many times before and just mark it as duplicated, but leaving this very first question "is this code good" open, because it still can get valuable answers which will take into account many context and indicators). And opinion-based answers could be just deleted.

Answer 1

There are various ways already to deal with opinion-based answers:

Post notices

Moderators can add post notices (example) like this one:

Want to improve this post? Add citations from reputable sources by editing the post. Posts with unsourced content may be edited or deleted.

and some sites in the network have custom ones. If nobody (the answer author or one of the other community members) improves the answer, it may be deleted. There's no automatic mechanism for this like a review queue or Roomba, so they often stick around, but the negative score and the notice serve as a clear indication that it's bad.

Some sites even have a notice on the (presumably subjective) question discouraging subjective answers: (example; more information here).

Back it up

Some sites which intrinsically deal with subjective questions like The Workplace, Parenting and Interpersonal Skills have a Back it up rule. You can't just post your opinion and deem it to be a good answer; you have to provide evidence. Answers which don't comply are often flagged as low quality and deleted.

Flags

If you see an answer which is nothing more than a rant, you can flag it as very low quality or (especially if it's abusive) for moderator attention and it will be dealt with.

---

1. It is just hard or impossible to predict if question is opinion based.

Sometimes, it certainly is, that's why we have procedures to reopen closed questions. The Politics question you mention has two pending reopen votes^*. Otherwise, users with a lot more experience than me and you can often predict the nature of answers quite well. They simply know whether a question is going to work for the site or not.

2. It is unfriendly for especially new users who do not have bad intentions.

This is an unfortunate misconception, which admittedly can be hard to grow out of. We vote on the content, not on the user. Not everything fits into the Stack Exchange Q&A model.

for him feedback that "it is opinion-based" was not clear enough (the same as for me often).

Sure. That's why there is a link in the close banner leading to this Help Center article with tips specifically for opinion-based questions, which links to another Help Center article with even more tips.

3. It is difficult to reconcile with questions about ethics.

Agreed, some 'soft' topics are harder to formulate an objective question about than 'hard' topics like software development, technology or mathematics. But if we didn't, we would need a lot more moderation power to keep all the ensuing discussion under control. The main problem is that you can prove an objective statement is right or wrong; an opinion you can only agree/disagree with.

^{*: You don't see them yet because you don't have enough reputation.}

Answer 2

there is no hard rules for when question will be marked as opinion-based

While there are no hard rules, there is e.g. this blog post, which gives some idea of when questions are too opinion-based. This is a combination of both how the question is written, and the answers it is likely to invite. Simply put: We can't tell users putting text in the answer box 'don't give us your opinion' if the questions they are writing their text under are likely inviting exactly that: Opinions. So no, we should not switch from closing questions to only moderating their answers.

While there is a difference between posting on a main site and a meta site, because questions on meta (whether that be site-specific or here) are inherently going to be more opinion based, the standars I hold them to are the same as or heavily based on some of the standards in the blog post I linked:

• A good meta question invites answers that explain why something should be done, how you think something should be done.
• A good meta question invites answers that are longer and more substantial than just chiming in with a yes, no or other forms of (dis)agreement.
• Good meta questions have a constructive, fair and impartial tone.
• And, with a very few exceptions, a good meta question is more than just mindless fun/discussion. What is the purpose or goal of having a certain discussion, what is the goal we're all trying to achieve by giving our opinions?

If it's not meeting some or any of that, your meta question may be closed, it may receive downvotes (if it's not impartial, there will be votes for agree/disagree on meta sites too).

With a big disclaimer that I'm not an 'native' to any of their communities, and as such their standards may differ from the ones I described above: Looking specifically at the examples you posted, they didn't meet the criteria from the blog post I linked. The Politics.se question is still asking for opinions on whether something is a sufficient argument, not facts or experience, which is a big no-no. Your Stack Overflow Meta question isn't really 'impartial', and falls in the 'mindless fun' category for me. I don't see what you're trying to achieve by collecting these opinions.