-9

Should we allow humourous questions on this site, like, "What is the most cringey Christian t-shirt you've ever seen?" or "Worst sermon illustration ever?"

Note to new people to meta: vote this question up if you agree, down if you don't. And if you have a great reason for doing either you'd like to share, add a comment or answer.

| |
  • 4
    No way man. Humor is good, but humour has too much of u in it. – Shog9 Aug 30 '11 at 18:39
  • 1
    Hopefully you'll keep my edit, as much as I don't like attention seeking joke questions, I do very much enjoy jokes in answers. – Peter Turner♦ Aug 30 '11 at 19:12
  • @PeterTurner actually jokes should be kept to a minimum and stick to comments. Answers should be quality. Now if a joke serves to help the answer then fine, but people shouldn't just post jokes as answers just to get votes. – DForck42 Aug 30 '11 at 20:01
  • 3
    @Dforck42, all I mean is "be joyful always, use jokes if necessary". The jokes oughta be in the answers, not the answer itself. – Peter Turner♦ Aug 30 '11 at 20:13
15

Speaking as a moderator on Programmers.SE, where we've had more than our fair share of these questions:

Noooooooooooooooo!

A thousand times no. The rest of the internet is for humor, Stack Exchange is for getting answers. The "fun" (I use that term loosely) questions that have no educational value cripple a site: they push other, useful questions people are actually trying to get an answer to off the front page, they inflate reputation, they wind up showing up as the top questions on every conceivable list, and they attract the exactly the type of audience we don't want: people who can't ask or answer good questions, but sure as heck can follow a formula of posting "What's your favorite X (as a Christian)?" and provide their opinion about what they think is their "favorite" whatever.

And perhaps worst of all, they aren't funny. Maybe they were funny 30 years ago, when some enterprising soul unleashed the terror of the "fun" internet poll upon Usenet, but every internet community does the same thing and the joke is stale. Let it die, or at least let it die here.

The FAQ explicitly bans this type of question:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)

Let's keep it that way.

| |
  • 2
    +1 for the darth vader reference :) – Andrew Aug 30 '11 at 18:11
  • Proving that while off-topic "funny" posts are not allowed, on-topic posts with good humor are welcomed. – Paul Draper Jul 23 '14 at 3:39
6

Questions of that type should be closed and/or deleted because they perfectly fit the faq's description of questions that should not be asked.

| |
1

Maybe, but those sample questions are extreamly subjective and discussiony.

| |

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .