Mention Worldbuilding in FAQ

Question

We had quite a few questions that were deemed off-topic because they asked about specific subjects relevant to the plot of someone's story, and not to writing in general.

I remember a question about "what could cause a lockdown of a nuclear power plant", a question how linguistics of an alien species could develop, something about choosing a believable motivation for a villain... Our current policy for these is "Help the poor soul out of a pinch, send them in the right direction where they could find the answers, and close the question."

Well, currently there is a site in beta (and doing really well) to answer exactly that family of questions: Worldbuilding. I guess mentioning that in the FAQ (the "topicality" of subjects) and migrating relevant questions there would be the right approach.

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Questions about creative writing specific to the world depicted: believable fictional creatures, political systems, advances of science, interactions of specific fictional factors with the real world, and other problems directly related to creation of consistent, believable plot elements within the specific setting of your story belong to Worldbuilding.SE.

While Writers answers generic questions that can be applied to a range of stories across a genre, Worldbuilding gives answers to questions specific to the narrow reality of your story.

Answer 1

Although I'd love to cement the link between Writers and Worldbuilding, I think this is a particular case which is not well-suited for the FAQ.

The FAQ page on "on-topic questions" reads as follows:

On the other hand, these kinds of questions aren't allowed here:

• Questions seeking to interpret or analyze an existing work.
• Proofreading requests.
• Requests to critique your work. However, please do feel free to use your own writing as examples in on-topic questions.
• The strictly interpreted correctness of English grammar or syntax rules (please ask those on English Stack Exchange, instead).
• Finding a professional to write for you, be your agent, etc.
• A specific, localized shopping recommendation as described here.
• Asking "what should I write about" (more about this here).
• Requests to rephrase something - a few sentences, or even a single sentence.

For more help, see "What types of questions should I avoid asking?"

Worldbuilding questions are a very, very specific sub-case of "what should I write about" and brainstorming requests. (For example, they're limited to the SF/F genres.)

I think that the FAQ, which is meant to provide a clear overview, would be weighed down unnecessarily by attempting to provide alternatives for a wide range of off-topic questions (for example, we don't write, Questions seeking to interpret or analyze an existing work (but if they're SF/F, try SciFi.SE) - that would be confusing. English.SE is something of an exception here because the scope of the two sites has a great measure of overlap, which could be relevant to almost all their potential audiences. But just explaining what we mean by specific worldbuilding questions (as opposed to good, on-topic-for-Writers.SE world-building questions) would be an onerous diversion.

Where it would be extremely helpful to reference Worldbuilding.SE would be on our On-Topic rundown, which goes into more detail on common cases. Worldbuilding could definitely be referenced from the "Research" topic there, or it could get its own sub-heading.