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Should we introduce hypothetical tag to indicate that the question asked is not a question related to personal (or a friend's) issues at work, but rather a theoretical issue?

People answering the question would know that there isn't (much) more additional info, since the question asked is not a 'real' problem.

Asking hypothetical questions would help us at wp.se to generate more content. Of course same standards are to be applied to these hypothetical questions as for the all the others questions.

More questions means more user interaction, more content and hopefully more help for guests.

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    Feel free to add a comment or edit the question, instead of just voting down.
    – mike
    Commented Jul 18, 2013 at 14:06
  • Meta tags (e.g. "homework" on other sites) are discouraged on Stack Exchange. If a question is good it shouldn't matter if it's hypothetical or real; if there isn't enough information, then either that needs to be addressed or it's not a good question.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Jul 18, 2013 at 15:10
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    @mike meta has different voting patterns. Upvotes generally mean "agree" and downvotes mean "disagree." So people voting down means people might disagree.
    – enderland
    Commented Jul 18, 2013 at 16:37

2 Answers 2

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I disagree, per @MonicaCellio's description of meta tags:

Meta tags (e.g. "homework" on other sites) are discouraged on Stack Exchange. If a question is good it shouldn't matter if it's hypothetical or real; if there isn't enough information, then either that needs to be addressed or it's not a good question.

Whether or not meta tags are allowed or not, I felt I should address this part of your question:

People answering the question would know that there isn't (much) more additional info, since the question asked is not a 'real' problem.

As Monica says, there should always be enough information. A hypothetical question should be fine, but if there isn't enough "information" (or a detailed enough description of the problem), then it becomes unanswerable anyway. There will be too many possible answers to the question and the whole thread will become a discussion.

We avoid these questions that are too broad, regardless of whether they are hypothetical, because they don't work well in Stack Exchange's model. The format sorts just one answer to the top, but everyone sees many answers they like. It becomes a poll or popularity contest instead of narrowing down on one real answer.

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I would not support this tag.

I have asked 21 questions here seriously (plus an April Fools joke, which could definitely have been real). My questions have a mix of "directly personally relevant" vs "I'm curious about" questions. I have also asked a few to get a comprehensive question for some of the more frequently discussed topics here (such as this one, this one, this one, and this one).

As long as a question is of a good format for the site, I personally do not care if it is your situation, a friend's situation, or a completely hypothetical situation.

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