I'm going to pull a few resources from the StackExchange blog, way back when these topics were originally discussed with respect to Stack Overflow. (As such, bear in mind these posts were written for Stack Overflow, not RPG.SE.)
The first relevant post is "Good Subjective, Bad Subjective"; the second is "Real Questions Have Answers". I'm going to pull a couple of the important quotes out of this as I write this answer, as these are very good references for what constitutes good answers. So, what makes questions like these good?
Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered!
When we judge questions like these on merit, we have to make a couple inferences. Here's my half-baked litmus test:
Does the question ask us to solve an interpersonal problem? If yes, is that interpersonal problem related to the actual execution of a roleplaying game?
Here's what I mean by this. In the two questions you've provided, the asker clearly wants us to solve their interpersonal problem. The answer doesn't concern our on-topic definition at all, as you've already pointed out. These questions I would argue are simply not on-topic.
As much as I wish to help these people, for the purposes of RPG.SE, we are an RPG site, and not for solely interpersonal solutions.
- Does the question define itself well? When you look at one of these questions, are you looking at something which needs minor/no clarification? Does it contain (almost) all the information you'd need to accurately answer it?
- Does the question arguably have a correct answer? If the best answer is "there are a lot of ways to approach this situation," then the question is not within the scope of the site and/or needs significant refinement. The use of the word "arguably" is intended here such that people feel (regardless of quorum) that there is a single, definitively good response to the question.
- Is it possible, within reasonable length, to provide enough information for an answer to be complete? If no, then the question probably needs to be closed as too broad.
- Does the question require an intrinsic/assumed knowledge of the people involved? If a question needs an answer based around who the people are and how they respond, it's probably not a good fit.
This is very similar to the response from "Real Questions Have Answers" (emph. mine):
Constructive subjective questions:
inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.
tend to have long, not short, answers.
have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.
...
I suppose one of the main points I'd like to make is that even if a question is tangentially related to roleplaying/RPGs, it isn't necessarily a good fit for this site. There's a lot of conversations one can have about roleplaying games, RP theory, and interpersonal relationships that, well, simply don't work well in this format.
I think we've come across a category of these. Now that I've better defined what (I consider) is this class of questions...
How do we improve questions like these?
Some of these questions may be unsalvageable. I'm throwing this out there first, because, while I would love as much as the rest of you to save these questions from an unanswerable state, we have to be open to the idea that they may simply not be a good fit.
That being said, I think there are a few things we can do to improve these questions as a whole:
Where possible, take the user to chat. Most of the time, these questions are written in a fit of frustration, so their purpose is not immediately clear. Often, when you talk with someone, they'll resolve their problem. However, there's a good chance you'll run into something concrete (and thereby worth asking a question about).
This one's an imposition on the community as well as the participant, so it's really only helpful when people feel motivated to do so.
Objectively analyze the text, and make an attempt to pull out the question. There is often a question in there, somewhere. See "Abuse: Is it fair if it's in-game?"; this was originally in the format of your two examples, but through refinement, we worked it into a manageable state (though, as @mxyzplk points out, not necessarily a good state). While I still think that it's somewhat out of the scope of the site, its core question is on-topic: "what do I do if the GM abuses me in-game?"
Other questions, like "How do I handle this GM?" are not, at least until their core question is identified and extracted.
Onholdificate the question, and explain to the OP why (and maybe invite them to chat to discuss it anyway). The question may simply not be salvageable. The OP may not be asking a concrete question. Rants, while sometimes helpful, are often simply just that: rants. Please take a look at MSO's "rant" tag as well; it has some useful information.
Additionally, it may be advantageous to mark these as duplicates of one another. Similar problems can be answered in similar ways.
To summarize:
These are questions which do not clearly define themselves. They are either rants, or are broad. While they may provide specific information about their problem, not enough information is present. We can improve them by drawing out exactly what the OP's question is, by talking with them and seeing if their question needs to be resolved in this format, or simply by closing the question and explaining why. Limiting the scope of this particular type of question isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Anyway, here's about my 50 cents, much more than I really have the authority to be giving. I hope there's some helpful content in here, or at least to kick off this discussion if I'm horribly, horribly wrong.
