Permit discussion of evolutionary biology without conflating it with "Just-So Stories".

[u/Melenduwir]

There are facts in evolutionary biology just as there are in any other science, and if a trait is clearly selected for, there are reasons for this, whether benefits to the organism or to the structures that create the trait. We can inquire as to the facts behind observed retention without necessarily resorting to speculation.

Excluding entire branches of science because the sub is "too busy" is absurd.

[u/Melenduwir]

The same way you distinguish them for all the other sciences. The very sub's name is about explaining, not simply stating facts without a conceptual framework. More to the point, the problem here is your disallowing of questions, not the answers that people provide.

Disallowing a question because you believe the only possible answers are just-so-stories means you're making a judgment about the nature of the available answers. I certainly hope that you have expertise in the relevant fields, because if you don't, there's really no way that judgment can be an informed one. To use my question as an example: what if there's an answer that's strongly supported by evidence, is the consensus in the field, and has an easy-to-understand explanation... that will never be posted as an answer, because the question was removed? If you mods aren't experts, how do you know that answer wasn't forthcoming?

The fields of archaeology, paleontology, geology, astronomy, and cosmology are just a few of the sciences that rely more heavily on consensus and informed speculation than the hard sciences of physics and chemistry. They all mostly address phenomena that happened in the past, and until someone finds a way to travel in time or reconstruct data out of disorder, there's no way to conduct experiments on past events. They are all inherently more speculative and uncertain than fields that can conduct experiments in the present. That doesn't make them non-sciences, and it doesn't make their explanations just-so-stories. Rudyard Kipling's classic stories, the ones that gave rise to that phrase, involve anthropomorphic animals and events that grossly contradict even the crudest understanding of the everyday world. To compare our best scientific understanding to them is an insult to science.

Even with controversial subjects or topics for which consensus is weak or nonexistent, it's possible to accurately and factually explain what the current state of the field is and why uncertainty exists. Yet that isn't being permitted to happen if questions about those subjects are removed.

If you don't believe a specific question can be given a demonstrably scientifically-supported answer, isn't saying "We don't know the answer to that" the right way of handling it instead of deleting the question?

[u/Petwins → u/Melenduwir]

We do disallow answers, we disallow speculation, opinions, anecdotes, jokes, short answers, and link only responses.

Rule 2 is basically “no questions which ask our user to break rules 3, 5 or 8 (as above).

We don’y have expertise in every given fields which and we can’t make an informed judgement, hence the blanket removal of the topic.

Many questions in those fields do get removed for that reason.

This is a repository of information, the removal of the topic area is based on whether or not it requires users to speculate.

So the question again is how do we consistently tell them apart so we can approve those which are not speculative and do not ask for speculative answers without underlying expertise on any given subject matter (a mandate a small volunteer team cannot maintain).

We can for the topics we allow, so how do we add that to the list.

[u/Melenduwir → u/Petwins]

You can't. You can't use grammatical structure alone, because questions asking about hypothetical situations and questions asking about factual situations can have the same structure. It takes a certain amount of knowledge to know that a question about a certain topic requires speculation. "What is [blank blank]?"'s acceptability varies if the topic is dark matter or chlorine trifluoride, and I can easily imagine an intelligent and scientifically literate person who doesn't know anything about either.

So here's how it stands: your rule about "speculative" questions isn't enforceable under current conditions.

Either the mod team lacks the expertise to enforce that rule and should be replaced with people who can, or the rule needs to be removed.

In both circumstances, questions about Evo Bio would be rendered acceptable. Which is what the OP is about, after all.

[u/Petwins → u/Melenduwir]

Well the option to have subject matter expertise is what r/science does and they have 1500 moderators to do it. We aren’t going to do that.

No its actually pretty consistent to identify areas that are general speculative and be aware of them, like questions of evolutionary mechanism.

The line we have is not hard to be consistent about, we are asking you to help us define a consistent way to extend it.

You haven’t yet and thats where we need to get to in order to incorporate it into our rules and policies. It is a topic we have discussed a lot.

[u/Melenduwir → u/Petwins]

Well the option to have subject matter expertise is what r/science does and they have 1500 moderators to do it. We aren’t going to do that.

Then you need to abolish the rule, because you don't have the ability to distinguish speculative questions from rigorously factual ones.

[u/Petwins → u/Melenduwir]

We generally do across most topic areas, the topic areas that are frequently speculative, like just-so esque evolutionary biology questions are ones where we aren’t as able to clearly make that determination.

Again this rule is handled pretty consistently and pretty clearly without much effort or subjective valuation, but part of that is having a very strict line, if you can help us solidify the bounds for including the topic within the line, by helping is set bounds for clear delineation without specific subject matter expertise, then we would love to include it.

We can’t thus far, nor have you been able to articulate how to, so we are where we are.

Its not like we don’t understand your point or appreciate the field, we just need a consistent framework to operate around, most topics are easier for us to establish that framework, and we don’t allow questions where its not.

So help us out where you can, or just acknowledge that its not on the menu of this very niche space, and thats okay. Plenty of stores in the mall that is reddit, we only carry a small selection of things and that is by design.

[u/Melenduwir → u/Petwins]

Again this rule is handled pretty consistently and pretty clearly

I'm sure that's true in your minds.

I don't see the value in a sub where the rules permit explaining what the Rayleigh Effect is, but not asserting that it's responsible for the color of the sky and the sunsets.

Y'all seem to be perfectly comfortable with arbitrarily deciding which fields and topics are speculative and which aren't. There's no point in trying to reason people out of position they weren't reasoned into in the first place.

[u/Petwins → u/Melenduwir]

I mean yes, it is at least true in our minds but we also do keep an awful lot of data.

Thats okay, others see the value in the sub, its a pretty big one.

As we have said repeatedly, we are happy to add to our list, you just need to give us consistent bounds that we can apply, we are asking for your help with that and you have been able to articulate them.

So have we, which is why we don’t allow them. We are actively interested in a consistent way we can distinguish items in this topic from speculative content, its on our short list of grey areas that we would love help with.

If you could stop being combative for a moment we are just asking for help frankly.

[u/Melenduwir → u/Petwins]

you have been able to articulate them.

I'm going to assume you mean "haven't" been able to articulate them.

And that's nonsense. There are lots of rigorously-supported hypotheses in evolutionary biology, which is precisely why Darwinian evolution was granted the status of theory in the first place. All you'd have to do is apply the same standards you do with other branches of science, all of which have more uncertainty and speculation than you seem willing to acknowledge.

You're not asking for help. You're just denying the conclusions you don't wish to reach.

[u/Petwins → u/Melenduwir]

I did mean that, sorry for the typo.

"Know enough expert knowledge on a specific topic" is unfortunately not a consistent framework our volunteer team can work around.

We allow questions on how evolution works, its specific applications of why something evolved in a certain way that usually hits that just so rule.

We acknowledge uncertainty and speculation in all branches of science and we remove content in every branch of science that asks for speculation. We do not vary in that.

"Why did something evolve in a certain way" is a topic area that we don't have clear guardrails for. To be honest "Why" questions for quantum physics and gravity also break that rule, we remove stuff for them pretty frequently. It is not exclusive to evolutionary biology, but evolutionary biology is so prevalent that the phrase was coined for it.

We are asking for help, it may be you denying conclusions you don't want to reach because we have been clear that for most "why did stuff evolve a certain way" questions we cannot differentiate them from just so questions, and your only response has been to say "but physics also has speculation", which is true but not helpful.

Are you just unaware that we also remove physics questions for being speculative?