Herea poster asks about inheritance, then she later reveals that she’s planning to use this information as part of a scheme to get out of a gym membership. For this, she gets mod noted for wasting people’s time and threatened with a warning if it happens again. I thought GQ was just for questions of a factual nature and that the motivation behind the question didn’t matter unless the poster was trying to break the law. What qualifies as a serious question, worthy of being placed in GQ?
I never start these sorts of ATMB threads, but I’m certain that at some point I’ve posted questions that I was curious about, but didn’t actually require the answer to. Is this not okay?
This note seems off to me too. “What is the factual information about tax liability in this situation?” seems like a proper GQ question to me. It really doesn’t matter why they want to know. It might be because they are really in that situation or because it came up in a movie, or just because they were curious.
If someone takes the time to compose a reply they are doing so because they want to participate in that conversation. So nobody’s time was wasted by that thread as far as I can tell.
In short, be upfront about the reason you are posting in GQ. There is no reason not to. If the OP had done so, the thread might have been moved to IMHO, but they would have received similar responses.
It actually seems like there is a good reason not to be upfront - because you’d like a factual answer instead of an opinion, and if you’re upfront about your motivation your thread might be moved. Maybe you’d receive similar responses, but because the board is broken down into sections for a reason, you’ll be less likely to get the information you were looking for.
Some clearly felt their time was wasted but I contend that isn’t rational. If they took the time to reply it was because they were interested in the subject and wanted to talk about it. The thread gave them that opportunity whatever the OP’s reason for asking.
The problem must have been more in the way the OP kept hinting at the ‘real reason’ for this being dumb in subsequent posts when there was no need to mention any ‘real reason’ in the first place. But on its face I just can’t see anything wrong with asking what they did in GQ. In it’s simplest form the question was “Factual question: A US citizen inherits a house in Sweden. They would like to live in it for two years. What are the tax implications in the US? In Sweden?”
Of course that, as any other question in GQ, could be answered factually in IMHO or even in the Pit but GQ doesn’t seem like the wrong place for it to have been.
“Let’s say that a U.S. citizen inherits a house and land in Sweden when a relative dies and leaves it to them”
The phrase “Let’s say” is usually used to indicate that a question is hypothetical, and not a real situation. Any question beginning with “let’s say” is one I would assume to be hypothetical.
She was clear about it. The phrase “let’s say” is a perfectly clear indicator.
At least it was to me, YMMV. I saw the thread before it was closed, and I knew it was hypothetical.
There was no ‘Need answer fast’ in the OP. Still, it sounded like a matter of real financial importance, not a matter of getting out of an ill advised gym membership. A wee bit jerky there.
That’s how I felt about it. No one forced anyone (specifically Reimann) to answer. Anyone that’s annoyed is annoyed simply because the answers they gave weren’t applied in a manner they were hoping they’d be.
People ask these types of questions all the time. Whether they ask for factual information about a small piece of a bigger puzzle or they ask a question about a situation without revealing all the information just to set up a gotcha or see if you’d react the same way they already did.
I have no idea why Anise needed all the ins and outs of moving overseas as part of breaking a gym membership, but lets be honest, if she had stated in the OP that it’s why she needed it, she wouldn’t have gotten the answers she was looking for.
Also Colibri, as part of closing the thread, specifically mentioned that Anise never said she was inheriting any land, that makes it hypothetical. If factual questions based on hypothetical aren’t allowed in GQ, we may need some new rules.
TL;DR, if Anise had made no mention of the gym membership, her thread wouldn’t have been closed, she wouldn’t have received a note, Reimann wouldn’t be so worked up. So what changed?
Actually, had she been upfront, the responses would have been about how to quit the gym club membership without getting a sales pitch (and possibly without constructing an elaborate lie). More useful perhaps?
And as to whether the question was hypothetical, the mention of the house being in Varmland led me to believe that the situation was real. I was going to report the thread so it could be moved to IMHO (where real-life legal questions go).
That’s the only thing that was worth mention here. A polite note would have been the solution. There was no need to close the thread, the mod could have added [hypothetical] to the title or OP if he thought anyone would be misled.
ETA: and she may have gotten the same answers anyway.
This is how I feel. Should people expect mod notes in the future if they ask a question about something they saw on television without explicitly stating that, and another poster comes in and reveals that the question was hypothetical? Maybe **Anise **would’ve received more useful responses if she’d asked the underlying question instead of the one she asked, but that’s not what concerns me. The mod note seems to be putting new rules in place that go beyond her specific post.
The OP very possibly could have gotten more useful help toward their ultimate goal if they had just asked. It could have been a GQ topic with useful answers that aren’t legal advice. “How do I cancel an LA Fitness membership without enduring their high pressure sales tactics?” In fact once it was clear that was the situation someone replied with a factual answer and a link to a site about how to do that.
But that isn’t the question the OP wanted answered. For whatever reason they had already answered that themselves and decided on an I Love Lucy-esque scheme. Here they just wanted to get some background information to be more fluent in the facts if necessary. They never meant to ask “How do I cancel an LA Fitness membership?” they meant to ask “What are the tax rules in this inheritance situation?” I don’t see what about that isn’t a valid, factual GQ question. It is the only one the OP wanted an answer to. We don’t usually demand to know the backstory motivation behind why a GQ question is asked.
“Let’s say” makes everything that follows hypothetical including Varmland.
In her second post (before Riemann answered her), she said, "Yes, there’s a reason for all of this, but it’s really too dumb to explain… "
My assumption at that point would have been that either a) She was writing a piece of fiction or fan fiction, or b) She was asking the question based on a situation in a piece of fiction.
In neither case is there a reason to be upset about answering the factual portion of the question.
It’s been a few days, and I still don’t feel much clearer on this - do hypothetical questions with factual answers belong in GQ now or not? So far it’s been said to be upfront, and maybe the post will be moved, which is pretty vague.
I don’t think the second sentence follows. Maybe they took the time to reply because they thought someone else was interested in the subject and needed/wanted to know the answer, and they were willing to help that person. But then it turned out that this was untrue.
IMO Reimann has a legitimate gripe here. Firstly the import of that answer to the OP wasn’t nearly what it would be if s/he was actually in that situation, and secondly, they didn’t need precise and detailed advice but only enough to sound convincing. There are many people who would be willing to share detailed advice if it’s important enough to help people deal with serious tax consequences but not if they just need some jive to help cancel their gym membership.
Of course, there are some who would respond anyway. Had the OP been upfront about what s/he needed, some of those people might have responded. But some not, evidently including Reimann.