3

I was just amazed to see that a question got closed, on the grounds that it is subjective and argumentative. If this is really the case, you might just close the complete site. If anything in life is subjective and argumentative, it is parenting.

First of all I disagree with the closers of the subject. There are objective arguments for immunization, I haven't seen any argument against general immunization being backed up by data.

But more general, the closing of this question really made me pessimistic about the onset of this Stack Exchange site. If being argumentative and subjectivity is an issue, just close the site. Just another example. The question on when you should allow your children to drink wine, would lead to interesting contradicting answers. Is it argumentative or subjective, sure? But still it is a legit question. It just shows that there is no general answer to a parenting question. You might change the name in American Parenting and create a single SE for every cultural background.

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3

I don't think that question is neither subjective nor argumentative.

It's possibly off-topic though. "What is the proof for scientific claim X" isn't really a parenting question, and indeed I saw a very similar question on skeptics.SE.

But I can see other questions being subjective and argumentative in a different way from parenting questions in general. Like "What is the best lullaby to get my kid to sleep", and "Why should you co-sleep? It's stupid!" being hypothetical examples of subjective and argumentative questions respectively. :)

1

You're right that when we're not dealing with engineering topics but with parenting, almost anything is a matter of opinion, so this can be a difficult matter to handle.

In the specific case, and because this site is brand-new with no decision history, I can imagine people (including myself) being a little trigger-happy in the valiant (but sometimes inaccurate) hunt for good high-quality content. It's important that the beta period generates lots of high-quality content because that is the yardstick against which every new question and answer will be measured. So for now, borderline questions like that one are at risk of being shot down even though they might be fine later on.

You must log in to answer this question.