There’s no one way to make such requests. It can be done via post report, PM, ATMB request, or post in a thread. Typically we don’t want such requests being hijacks of a thread, and since discussion of that sort are typically not the topic of the thread, the methods outside the thread are better (PM/report), though it happens enough in the body of the thread.
That’s kind of a wishy washy answer, but it’s not a hard and fast rule. Moving threads is not a big deal and it happens frequently. We don’t always agree with thread move requests though, so if they don’t get moved that’s also not a big deal either.
“How race plays a role in your chances of being arrested in the US” is clearly a question with factual answers. You could cite all sorts of statistics on police encounters, arrests, convictions, etc.
By the standards of “factual answer” you seem to be applying, how could a question about what would happen in a hypothetical situation that resembles a scene in a movie ever have any answers that would be appropriate to GQ?
You can phrase that in a GQ way, certainly. A topic like that is very likely to drift into IMHO/GD territory quickly, though. You could also ask, “Are there published standardized test results demonstrating Donald Trump’s intelligence?” That is a very clear question asking for a factual answer, and a factual answer likely exists, but I wouldn’t count on it continuing as a GQ-appropriate thread for long. Some subjects are too sensitive.
But even acknowledging that, that wasn’t what the thread topic was. It was asking people to predict the results of performing a certain kind of behavior in public. Not asking for examples of it occurring, not asking about laws regarding that behavior, but asking people to give predictions. In other words, soliciting opinions.
It would depend. You could ask whether a scene is physically possible. You could ask if it was based on a real event. But asking how people are likely to react to something rarely has a factual answer.
Yeah, I think we mostly agree. Limiting discussion of race in that thread was reasonable because it was likely to devolve into an argument, and without a clearly specific factual question regarding it, was going to be hard to answer in a GQ-appropriate manner.
The quote in this thread from Shodan that I responded to is just wrong, though: there are factual answers to how race relates to likelihood of arrest.
Sounds like we also agree that the question as posed in the thread basically has no possible GQ-appropriate answers.
In general, I’m against moderating that uses vague terms such as “comments along these lines” without an explicit description of what “these lines” are. Is it the topic (being black vs being white)? Is it the snarkiness in GQ? What is it that needs to be curtailed?
It is also a frequently stated rule that if you have an issue with moderation in a thread, you don’t discuss that problem in the same thread - you start an ATMB thread to clear it up.
So I think engineer_comp_geek could have been more clear, but garygnu and Saint Cad both violated the rule about discussing moderation in a thread.
I also agree it is difficult to actually answer the question factually, and any factual answer will include a discussion of race. I understand the sensitivity to the race question as a potential hijack into GD territory over police officer behavior, and the desire to limit the scope of the thread to the idea of parkour or whatever as a GQ question, but I think trying to limit the answer to GQ was the wrong approach in this instance.