Are questions that lack a location tag really too broad?

Question

I would like to settle this issue once and for all...

It seems to me that voting to close a question purely because it lacks a location tag is actively counter productive. When users think their location is relevant they're free to add it, but it really feels like we're trying to force people into culturally dependant answers when the majority of them aren't asking for them.

I've even spotted a question recently that specifically pointed out that the OP was open to answers from other locations and cultures because they found these answers helpful on their previous questions...

In my experience people from around the world have a lot more in common than they have meaningful differences.

I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it till it stops being true:

Early on we decided to be a multicultural site, which is great. On the other hand, from what I've observed so far, we have users consistently accepting answers written by users from other cultures and locations without batting an eyelid. It seems like we solved a problem we didn't really have by adding a hurdle that the majority of users don't think about when they're posting questions.

Here's one example of a situation where a close reopen cycle clearly didn't help

I don't think I've ever seen a case where the op seemed to indicate that the answers weren't appropriate because they came from users in a different location/culture. Maybe I missed it... If you have seen this feel free to let me know.

Answer 1

This isn't something we can make a blanket statement about. Questions here tend to be very broad and limiting them by culture may help combat that. Every limiting detail makes a question (potentially) more answerable, in the Stack Exchange format.

I'm actually quite happy with the answer I wrote here on the question How much should we be enforcing specific and regional questions?

So, the question is, which end of the spectrum do we want to be on. Do we feel that Interpersonal Skills are more broadly the same across cultures or do we assume that they're so vastly different that we practically require every question to have a locality tag... personally, I think we are somewhere in the middle.

Two and a half months haven't changed my thoughts on this. I still think that we're in the middle - for a few reasons.

• People are often unaware when or that their culture is different. This is proven to me time and time again on posts here. Some questions make it obvious to me (as an American) that they're from a completely different culture, such as Is it possible for my friend to resume communication with his unofficial sister without earning her husband's mistrust? Without some marking of where this is, the entire question would be quite confusing to those who've never heard of this concept.
• There are, quite simply, a lot of things that are similar between cultures or that don't change so specifically from one nationality to another. They may be common among most of Asia or all of South America or the English-speaking world (excluding India)... And I'm sure that there are some things that are universal (respect your mother!).

The problem with the latter point - which relates to the former - is that unless we find someone who is a cultural expert on all of the cultures of the world, we can't know when it matters what culture someone is from, we can only guess.

• I think that we need to consider how important cultural relevance is to a question. So, if you're from one culture and trying to understand how to do something when plopped a different one, either due to travel or work, or interacting with someone from another culture visiting yours - if you want answers to be very specific to that culture, you should emphasize it by marking the question with a tag.

  • How do I deal with people who can't deal with local payment customs?
  • How can my cousin restore harmony between his Indian mother and American mother-in-law?

• Some questions don't need a cultural tag because they don't take place in a "culture" - for example questions about interactions that are on the internet. Yes, "the internet" is a "culture" of sorts... but it's not quite the same... but we have tags for that too... online-interaction.

I'm sure I can think of some other reasons but, for now, I'm going to move on...

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HDE's answer here emphasizes something that I've been trying to keep in mind while writing this answer... questions do tend to be quite broad and, as I said at the start, any additional details will help questions be more answerable... but I also wonder how many answers actually write from any amount of cultural awareness. It's impossible to know since most users don't identify where they are from in their posts but I'd bet that many answers are written by people from outside the tagged culture.

BUT we don't generally set rules for questions based on the answers they receive, so I'm not sure it makes sense to say

No one pays attention to culture tags, so we may as well pitch them.

There are definitely questions that have attracted answers from both outsiders and people from those cultures and, in the cases I can think of, the insiders generally do well: How should a person be told to apologise when he thinks he isn't wrong? Outsiders may also do well if they write responses in a way that shows knowledge of the culture (as aonongoodnurse's answer does here) Is it possible for my friend to resume communication with his unofficial sister without earning her husband's mistrust?

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So, that leaves us with a few options.

1. Be strict. Require cultural tags on all questions.
   This potentially will hurt us. Some users may have otherwise excellent questions that we really want to include here but they are unwilling to state a location. This would be a loss for the site. Please note that this is me saying this... I have a protectionist streak... "Do what's best for the site"... but losing an otherwise interesting, detailed, well-written and defined question because they won't stamp a tag on it... that's not in the site's best interest.
2. Ban cultural tags.
   ANARCHY!!! I think I've explained already why these are definitely useful, though, see my final note at the end of this post for a caveat.
3. Require them on questions that are about specific subjects
   We pick a list of subjects that are more likely to have cultural concerns - marriages/weddings or religion or politics for example - and we require that anything that is about one of these topics has a tag but the rest of it we only "recommend" a tag. This would be really complicated to remember and enforce. Maybe in a year or two after we know more about other cultures this will be easier but right now, this could be a chore.
4. Only request/require cultural tags if the answers start showing that they're not being helpful to the OP.
   If the OP posts something on an answer along the lines of "what you're saying doesn't apply in my culture" we should probably stop the question (put it on hold) and get some cultural information. This may require that some answers be deleted because they're now invalid but I think this may be the better path.
5. Request cultural tags everywhere but never require them.
   We won't close a question that is lacking a tag but we will still ask people to include them. We have a faq meta question that explains why these tags are valuable and we link to it when we ask people to include them. If the question has other quality problems, it's closed.

If you have additional "solutions", I'm happy to hear them. One and two seem too stark, three is my favorite of them but seems really difficult to implement and four seems like it might do more harm than good... five but it's about what we're doing right now, so it's the path of least resistance. I suppose we could combine four and five:

Request cultural tags everywhere and put questions that don't have them on hold if it becomes obvious that answers aren't culturally appropriate.

If the tag is added to the question, it can be reopened and we should consider deleting the answers that were posted that are inappropriate to the culture in question... or whatever the answer to this question ends up being: What should we do about answers based on the 'wrong' culture? or I guess this question's top answer says "delete them as NAA": "Just the facts, ma'am." OR Reining in answers.

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Also, I'd like to emphasize that I'm still not convinced that location tags need to be on every question but I do think that mentioning the location is valuable in the question.

I actually have a concern about how we're tagging these questions. We're an increasingly global society. Even if something is culturally appropriate in one place, that doesn't mean that the people follow that culture. For example, America is the "Great Melting Pot". That means that all of those questions we have tagged united-states don't really necessarily tell us much if the people that are being discussed are first-generation immigrants trying to deal with their parents. Our tags need to focus on cultures, not countries... but that's likely more complicated to implement.

Answer 2

I think it might be worth stepping back and taking a look at the different ways cultural information is helpful.

1. Someone literally just asked a question today where they noted that while the specific situation is similar to an older question, the cultural and location is different, and that as a result they needed different answers.
2. I can think of plenty of questions where answers were written that would be true if the OP was from one culture, but that weren't true when applied to the OP's culture. Here's one example. Here's another really interesting example: because two cultures were involved in the question, the OP got two answers that came to two different conclusions.

3. People have mentioned that they would write an answer, except for the fact that the location specified in the question made their answer unhelpful. Here's an example:

   In Europe the stereotype I am aiming at is that "every person looking like he is from Pakistan, must be a programming guru", as that is the job that a lot of people from Pakistan are here for... So naming someone a programming guru could probably just be joking and using that stereotype over here... This will not work in Pakistan itself...

Cultural information is one piece of information out of many. It is not the most important thing.

At the same time, I think cultural information is crucial for several reasons:

1. It helps people reading the question decide if the question is applicable to them, or if their culture is different enough that they need a new question. The OP may personally with a question and answers about "people"; that doesn't mean everyone else reading the question is.
2. It has in some cases lead to better answers. I expect that as we get more experience as a community answering questions, culture will work its way into answers more and more frequently.

I think getting most questions to add cultural information (something more specific than europe or southern europe or middle asia) is worth it.

Should these questions be closed? It depends on the question. Often, questions lacking location information also have other problems associated with them. There are some cases, such as questions about forums, where the culture isn't associated with a location but the fact that the OP is participating in an online community. But... we've learned that one reason to close a question is that it doesn't have enough detail, and culture is an important detail, so... yes, these questions should be closed.