Citation or Link needs to be mandatory in questions

Question

I am going to argue that a citation or link needs to be mandatory for every question, otherwise the question should be closed. I recognise that this a perennial question and proposition that has been raised numerous times.

Is it possible to have a giant floating banner that reads: "YOU MUST CITE YOUR CLAIMS […]"

Striking a balance between citations and common sense in answers

The standard of question crafting seems to be quite low and it takes a disproportionate amount of time for commentators to support and develop the question. Many questioners are first timers, with very few providing ongoing engagement or interested in answering questions. Closing questions off without links or citations will encourage deeper and more thoughtful engagement.

Many questions are not really related to research or subject to any serious consideration. The questions that get me upset are interesting questions but are based on opinion, TV shows or a general feeling without any attempt to read or google any background information. As the result the question is very conceptual, and the OP has not done the required reading to understand the complexity of the background answer nor the research basis for their opinion.

I have had responses where the OP gets frustrated that their broad comfortable generalisation is fictional and not based on research, resulting in discouragement for people who answer.

When prompted for a citation or link, negative or sarcastic remarks tends to be more likely than not. OPs can feel that responders are being too "intellectual" and "too academic" or inaccessible which has been the previous worries in other posts. However, there are Reddit, Facebook and other groups that do not require any standard that they should be posing their questions.

If we make closing questions without links or effort the norm, we can protect those who are interested in developing an engaged and stimulating SE without subjecting them to hostile OPs. The baseline effort for a question should at least be a simple google and ideally a nice journal citation. There are plenty of open-access journals accessible through google as well. Hopefully taking these steps will increase the standard and the quality of questions resulting in more interest and engagement. Thoughts?

Answer 1

My answer to this comes from my pre-existing bias that answer quality is far more important than question quality.

I certainly would like references to be mandatory on answers, as I mentioned previously. However, this was not actioned, and we continue to rely on mod post notices for citations needed, and downvoting to tackle this. So given the current standard for answers, I don't see anything further happening for questions - ie, I recommend upgrading our standard for answers first.

For the record, I have a simple voting system for questions: If you provide a citation or link, you get my vote, otherwise you don't. This doesn't mean that I think citations or links are either sufficient or necessary for good questions, but I only get 1 vote, and rely on others having different criteria for what makes good questions to make the system work. In reality, by voting this way, I've noticed that I upvote for just as many bad questions (that end up getting downvoted or closed) as good ones.

Please vote down bad questions, vote to close them, flag them, whatever. If others agree, then they will get closed.

Answer 2

Converting something I had posted as a comment into more of an answer...

1. I disagree that we should explicitly require a citation or link for every question. There are too many cases where a good question can be asked without a citation (or where a citation would not really improve the question).

2. In the situations described in this meta question, where new users unfamiliar with the fields of study here post uninformed questions based on pop culture sources, speculation, or folklore/heresay, we have the custom close reason "not framed in psychology or neuroscience". We also have a short meta FAQ on this close reason: Why was my question closed as "not framed in psychology or neuroscience"?

Therefore, I'd recommend for these sorts of questions that we vote to close using this close reason, and possibly include a comment linking to that meta as a suggestion for how they could improve their post to have it reopened/avoid closure.

Answer 3

Jeromy Anglim’s answer to prior research in questions says:

I agree that good scientific questions will typically show prior research. However, I don't think that prior research per se should be a requirement for questions on this site. I'm much more concerned with issues like:

• Is the question answerable in a scientific way? (e.g., Is the scope of the question appropriate?)
• If such a question was answered, would it improve the Internet?

The thing is that answers require citations to back claims made (within reason of course).

With this in mind, I think that

(within reason) prior research should be required and citations for that research should be provided.

Looking for, and providing citations to, reliable sources of information takes time; and if information on prior research provides the required citations, this will greatly cut the time down.

Not only that, but those who read the question and know not a lot (or nothing) about the subject will also be helped with the sources provided. Maybe that person who didn’t know about the subject finds something else which answers the question, in which case citations to prior research increases chances of an answer.

A balance is needed, of course. Citations won’t be needed for common sense and generally well known information. Citations should still be provided regarding information well known within the relevant field of study but not necessarily well known in the “general population”.