Should questions that mis-state or lie about facts in their titles be moderated?

While I agree that the premise was flawed (and I apologise for my own answer, which I posted without even bothering to fact check – mostly because my answer wouldn’t have changed), being the good solid Liberal that I am, I couldn’t possibly advocate such “thoughtcrime” as banning people from asking stupid questions.

I don’t think anyone should be banned. I think the questions should be moderated. Question titles should not misrepresent false statements as facts.

They can ask if a statement is a fact. But one of the guidelines for flagging is “misleading,” and I can’t think of anything more misleading than this.

As a hypothetical example, imagine if I asked the question:

“Barack Hussein Obama has just admitted to being a member of al-Qaeda. Should he be impeached?”

The question “should he be impeached?” is totally within Fluther guidelines. The problem is that it is based on a premise that is something I just made up and presented as a fact-based springboard for the question. I don’t understand why such questions are tolerated.

Moderation should take care of the problem.

I think these things are well disposed of in the threads they inspire. Do you remember the person who was dismembered by a crowd after posting about how Muslims were exempt from the confiscatory taxes on Obamacare? Fluther doesn’t let too many folks get away with much of that crap. It really shouldn’t have to be up to the moderators to decide whether questions are disingenuous.

@dpworkin, I agree that the community is good at fact-checking; however, as the question I linked to clearly shows, lots of people who participate in the question still get mislead—even after a thorough debunking.

In the tax question I mentioned, we all debunked it (47% pay no INCOME taxes, not “no taxes”—a huge difference) but then many people still answered the question as if 47% of people really paid no taxes. So, clearly, those people were mislead.

And this doesn’t even account for all the people who browse the questions and read them but don’t answer them. How many of them come away from the site believing that Obama accepted no foreign aid for the oil spill, or that 47% of Americans paid no taxes?

You have a point. I would hate to have to make those decisions as a moderator, though. Their job is difficult enough, and already inspires unnecessary animus.

Yes. Not only for the simple fact that it’s misleading, but also for the fact that people can find questions and answers and information from Fluther through various search engines and while I don’t think the example you provided in your details happens all that often, if it did, it would look terrible for the site for any outsiders looking in.

As far as the other participants believing the false information, that’s their own fault for not doing their homework or asking the OP to provide a link.

I don’t think the entire discussion should be deleted, but the moderators should ask the OP to edit their title and make it appropriate. Of course it’s not their job to make sure all information anyone spews on this site is correct, but that’s why we have the “Flag as…” option.

I completely understand where you’re coming from, @Qingu. However, it would be supremely difficult for us (mods) to be sufficiently up-to-date on every single subject to be able to spot such a question every time. If we only removed the ones we spotted, surely there would be many more that we missed.

Now and again, we do remove questions that are pure propaganda, when they are so fantastical as to be blatantly obvious (such as your “Obama is a member of al-Qaeda” example) but for the most part we rely on our members to ferret out the truth of the matter.

I come down on the side of no, they should not be modded or deleted. I think it would be difficult for the moderators, as others mentioned, and I always have a small hope that extreme people who listen to crap like your example will begin to question unlikely hateful statements themselves, after witnessing how often these claims are simply untrue.

I believe that those who ask inflammatory questions based on demonstrable falsehoods should be asked by moderators to formally retract their question with an apology to the community.

Such questions are used to spread disinformation and sometimes to promote intolerance and ignorance. I’m not alleging this is what happened in the case cited.

I believe we have an obligation to check our facts when starting a thread, especially when the question is inherently inflammatory.

Oh, I don’t know. People post bullcrap all the time on Fluther. It would be a full time job to get every one of them to apologize every time.

To answer your question, yes. But after someone has flagged it “misleading.”

The mods are human, and have no way to know, or even research, the truth in every question’s statement.

By the way, what’s the difference between asking an infactual question, or simply posting an infactual answer? True – the question gets more attention – but if one were to want to write something incorrect, they could just write it as a post – with the same results.

I just googled, “Obama Accepts foreign help” and I got linked to several stories saying just that. Heres one for an example.
link
But even if his or her question was false it still bought about opinions about asking for foreign help.
No sweat for me to answer or not.
I think they asked in good faith. Even if it turns out to be a false story, its really hard to tell the real stories from the fake on the internet.

No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t think the moderators need to “baby” us that much. Besides, I can only foresee people disagreeing about what’s “fact” and what’s not.

Plus, I can virtually guarantee that we’d be accused of “censoring the right”. Just refuting that would be a full time job!

Maybe a better approach would be to make a guideline that says, “Try to avoid making controversial claims as a lead-up to your question?” I mean, technically, questions need to be in the form of questions, but the examples I mentioned are two-sentence titles where the first is a declaration, not a question.

I’m torn on this. I grow weary of ‘X is Y- aren’t you sick of it?’ or ‘are people who believe X idiots?’ questions. They’re not really questions to me- more of a loudspeaker.

Then again, Fluther usually takes care of that in the replies. We have some amazingly smart people here.

I sometimes worry about the way Fluther would look to an outsider- yet if they read the question and responses they will become educated and the problem resolves itself.

The one thing that doesn’t sway me is the worry about people being mislead. If someone wants to learn the truth, it will be found. I’m not entirely comfortable trying to protect people from their own ignorance, or in some cases, gleeful ignorance. It’s up to them whether they learn and grow- not me.

I second @YARNLADY

@gemiwing – GA.

“if they read the question and responses they will become educated and the problem resolves itself.”

Resolution being the key word. Great Answer, Great Question count being one solution.

How “exciting and interesting” Fluther would be if we ALL gave questions that all of us knew the absolute answer to. Including the person asking the question.

Boring! :-)

@Qingu Sigh…perhaps a question should be if Jellies are unsatisfied with a question and their answers are childish should they be moderated??

My question qualified the opening statement with these specific additional questions…
“Is this too little too late? Why did this take so long? Is there more to the story and is House doing all that it needs to move this forward to a proper conclusion??”

All legit questions Germain to the title and most of the comments dissected and further the question but apparently not to your “specifications”. I thought that was the whole purpose of this site? Am I missing something here?!!

Further you and I thoroughly discussed the nuances and semantics of my question, others posted to the same degree, I even acquiesced that my opening statement was not clear enough and you felt the need to go and do this? hmmm looks more like a personal attack than a legit question to me!! Next time dial 1–800-whaa!

Your opening statement mislead several posters into answering as if it were true. It is “misleading.” That’s why I flagged it.

It’s not about “semantics.” It’s about presenting a false statement as a true statement, and then asking a question based on it. That’s deceptive.

If you had an interest in not being misleading and/or deceptive you would have changed your question title by now.

@Qingu I told you I can no longer edit it nor care to. There are plenty of referenced links to support where and why I asked that question. Up until yesterday’s announcement US Senators were writing directly to the President as to why he was not fully responding to the international requests to supply foreign vessels and yesterday word comes out that he finally did. That is what my question was about, all legit and no need to change the title thank you very litte. Here is one of those letters. My question was not politically motivated nor meant to mislead, you are doing a pretty good job yourself of doing just that. So what is your real problem Q??

Is it not easy and educational enough. (learning from mistakes) That, if a person produces an “incorrect” question. The group will provide information to correct it in the body of the post. Thereby, re-directing it in the proper direction?

An informational lesson in itself.

Instead of it turning into a opportunity to bash someone.

How was your question title legit?

“After 70 days the White House accepts international help for the oil spill.”
—this is demonstrably BS.

“Is this too little too late?”
—This is premised on the aforementioned BS being true.

In what universe is this not misleading, Cruiser?

I would like to suggest that we are dealing with a misunderstanding here. I am seeing two decent, sincere, honest people, each of whom sincerely holds to his point of view. I saw the question as having been disingenuous, and I agreed with @Qingu. However, I also know @Cruiser to be a straightforward, honest soul with whom I can disagree on politics without anyone ever becoming disagreeable.

I believe that when he posted the question he thought he was posting straightforward facts. Now that he knows that there is at least the appearance that his question is misleading, perhaps a moderator can send it back to him for editing, and he can reword it in a less ambiguous way, and this argument, insofar as it refers to that particular question, can be ended.

Removed by me…my apologies to dpworkin!

:::sigh:::