Do we want theory questions here? What kind?

Question

This question was closed for being too broad: How to be accountable for your actions but not responsible for others' needs? I tried to constrain it to be about a very specific dilemma concerning interpersonal skills. The one comment explaining its broadness didn't provide any explanation of that judgment besides contrasting it with "actual, specific problems that people have."

This implies that the close-voters believe that all questions here should be at the level of "My husband and I are having an argument," not "how do I use this skill?"

Do we want to allow questions about interpersonal skills that aren't in the context of an active interpersonal conflict?

For other examples, see What impact does "mirroring" have on other people? and How can I learn to be a good active listener?

Answer 1

Yes, we want questions about specific theory problems.

In order for this to be an SE about Interpersonal Skills and not just one about Interpersonal Problems, we need to be able to discuss the skills themselves. It's useful to have questions like "Why should I apologize for an accident?" as well as questions like "The same barista keeps getting my name wrong; what do I do?"

People do have real, specific problems with interpersonal skills that are not limited to a certain scenario. We want questions that aren't just "Which skills do I use?" or "How do I use this skill in this situation?" but also "When do I use this skill?" and "Why is this a useful skill at all?"

For analogy, here are some theory questions on other SE sites:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/461203/when-to-use-virtual-destructors
• https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/141399/why-is-it-so-bad-to-optimize-too-early
• https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/37103/what-is-my-guy-syndrome-and-how-do-i-handle-it
• https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/8919/is-it-safe-to-put-hot-food-in-the-fridge

Answer 2

This is probably where we will go in the not too distant future. You have convinced me.

We are developing a good (and growing) catalog of actual experience questions and answers, the next step for us may well be discussing the very kinds of subjects you mention. The sooner that trend starts, the better.

The discussions that would occur here will probably lead to other future expansion of the site.

Answer 3

It can be a case that when you read the help center, you see that your question is perfectly a question about theories and concepts, yet people still think it's a broad question, and apply the protocol for it instead. Why is that?

Is your question in the form of "what is the resource/research for these observations?"? If so, take a look at this question: Are resource recommendations on topic?. In short, it's because of the ambiguity of language that makes people misunderstand you. You want to send a message "this is an objective observation", but because you don't know how to say it explicitly, they misinterpret it as "this is my personal experience".