Medical questions: what is the line between on / off topic, and how should they be handled?

Question

These recent questions (on the front page of questions as of time of posting):

1. What are the risks of surgery for a tongue-tied toddler? (asking about risks of surgery, relatedness of other medical issues)
2. https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/7562/one-year-old-is-restless-and-scared-after-an-injection (specific medication injection side effects)

seem to be asking for medical advice. Based on the FAQ, "specific medical issues" is the first item listed under off-topic subjects.

I've also looked at the related question do we need to avoid serious medical questions? which contains an example - both of the above questions seem to me to be 'off topic' based on that example, but both questions also have upvotes as well...

I've seen other questions that seemed close to this line before as well - I don't remember specifically which ones off-hand, but a quick search and evaluate turns up this, this, this, this (closed), and this, which also seem to be specific medical questions.

So my question(s) - What exactly is the line between on/off topic with regards to medical questions? Are there suggestions for how to edit (or get the OP to edit) this type of question to be more on-topic? How should we deal with this type of question?

Answer 1

I hereby propose the following guidelines for medical questions, which I believe better fits the way people are actually using the site, while still addressing issues of liability:

Medical questions should solicit advice from a parent's point of view, requiring no professional expertise, and should not seek to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.

I think the reason we haven't been very strict on closing medical questions is that they have been answered fairly well for the most part. People are citing authoritative sources and strongly suggesting consulting a doctor when it's indicated. Where personal experiences are cited, they are clearly denoted as anecdotal. The anticipated and feared dangerous diagnostic answers that prompted making specific medical issues off topic in the first place have not materialized.

Answer 2

I'll be honest: I saw both questions, and felt like neither were particularly good questions.

However, in addition to the specific medical advice, this question included elements that I felt were on-topic (mostly "How do you deal with your baby being so frustrated?").

The other question didn't seem to exclude non-medical issues, since the core of the question seemed to be "she is very restless,scared and keeps crying without a reason.What could be the problem?", in which case the medical content could be seen as merely background information.

In both cases, I took no action (aside from some cleanup edits) because I wanted to see what the community consensus was.

As it was, one of the questions got two answers, each of which addressed different parts of the question (and the higher-voted of the two addressed the frustration part of the question which I felt was on-topic).

That being said... neither question received any flags, edit suggestions, close votes, or even down-votes.

I am trying to be slower to react as a moderator for any "grey" areas, particularly where new users are concerned. Partly this is to make the site more welcoming; partly this is in hopes of seeing more "policing" activities from the community members at large.

Frankly, I was surprised neither one of the questions went as long as they did without any negative or corrective attention.

So, thank you for bringing this to meta.

Regarding your basic question here, though (where do we draw the line):

I suggest technical questions about a specific medical condition that has been diagnosed are off-topic. This also applies to any question that details a set of specific symptoms, and asks for a diagnosis or suggestions as to "what it might be".

Questions about how medical conditions relate to behavior (either how the person with the condition behaves, or how people around them behave), should be on-topic.

In both of the examples listed, the questions fall clearly on both sides of those dividing lines.

I think the best way to handle this is to edit out the parts that deal with asking about the diagnosis (i.e. anything that isn't explicitly relevant as background for the behavior).