Are big-list questions inappropriate for this forum? [duplicate]

Question

Before using the Psychology and Neuroscience stackexchange I was more familiar with the MathOverflow which is a more mature member of the stackexchange community. This platform is used by professional mathematicians that practice both pure and applied mathematics. Furthermore, on the MathOverflow it isn't uncommon and it isn't considered unproductive to ask questions which involve a big list.

Consider the following examples:

1. Big list of repositories of mathematical preprints and postprints
2. Proofs without words

Now, I recently asked a specific question on the existence of good neuroscience research blogs. I gave concrete examples in the case of AI to clarify what I meant, distill being an example. After a couple days without an answer I decided to share the question with a neuroscientist I have communicated with in the past, Konrad Kording.

Dr. Kording, runs a well-known neuroscience lab and isn't merely providing a list of opinions. If you check each of the blogs in his answer they are all neuroscience research blogs. I must add that the first link to https://bitsandbrains.io/ fits the question description in particular.

Consider these posts taken from bitsandbrains:

1. Some thoughts on building interdisciplinary biological/data science teams
2. Bilateral Homology
3. Connectome Coding: Discovering the Missing Link between Genotypes and Phenotypes

This leads me to the following questions:

1. Before downvoting the question, was any detailed consideration given to the answer of Dr. Kording?
2. Is my question, which I discussed with other neuroscientists, imprecise?

Answer 1

Like StrongBad mentioned in a comment on the original question, questions where any answer is correct are not a good fit for SE.

In fact, in the help under "Don't Ask" the very first item is:

To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …

every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”

Different sites have different levels of permissiveness of certain questions that don't follow this rule, but that's probably where the downvotes come from.

Answer 2

As I said in my comment explaining my down vote and VTC, while the question is clear and limited in scope, I think every answer will be equally correct. The example I gave was consider the following two answers

Alice's blog cover neurotransmitters in depth. I really like her post on GABA and anxiety

and

Bob's blog covers deep learning at an introductory level. I really like his post on using PyTorch for object identification.

I think both would be valid answers, but how do we judge which is "correct". This is a clear cut example of a don't ask question.

Now of course we can make exceptions, but I am always a little hesitant about requests for exceptions from relatively new users. I also think justification based on practices at MO are not good since they are historically different from the rest of the SE system. Of course other sites in the SE system allow big list questions. In fact, I recently asked about creating a big list question on a site I moderate.

In summary. I think big list type questions should be the exception and not the rule. We should make a case-by-case determination for each request and we should attempt to come to a consensus regarding what the answers will look like prior to asking the question. If we choose to make a big list question, I think it should be made community wiki and the first comment shold link back to a meta discussion.

Answer 3

To be fair, I understand where users like Bryan Krause and StrongBad are coming from. Unlike the MathOverflow or the Theoretical Computer Science stackexchange the average quality of most questions on this site isn't research-level. I am hopeful this will change and I am actively trying to convince friends of mine that are neuroscientists and cognitive scientists to contribute here. However, I think we should avoid categorically downvoting 'big-list' questions because they can be useful if worded carefully.

I worded my question carefully. The term 'best' and 'favorite' were consciously avoided and I laid out a specific set of criteria to qualify 'good research blog'. It has to cover:

• methods for experimental, computational and theoretical neuroscience
• comprehensive reviews of basic neuroscience research

To provide a lower-bound on the quality I expect I gave concrete examples. Distill being the ideal I had in mind.

Finally, I must note that Memming Park who runs a lab at Stony Brook has previously made a case for the value of such questions. (He uses an example from the MathOverflow to back his point.)

Addendum:

From what I can gather from AliceD, Bryan Krause and StrongBad I understand that there is a fear that on this forum a big list type question would invite spammy answers. I must clarify that from the beginning I wanted to know whether an online journal like distill existed for neuroscience research. I passed this question to both Konrad Kording and Adam Marblestone who both have a very broad understanding of neuroscience research.

Now, to avoid the 'big list' conundrum I decided to add the reference request tag. I am indeed looking for a particular kind of reference and what you can infer from Konrad's answer is that an online journal like distill doesn't exist for neuroscience research.

I think this should allow me to accept Konrad's answer and also avoids the risk of spammy answers.