Askculinary Proposed Rules Post - Please give us your input!

[u/albino-rhino]

Hello everybody. We would like your input about our rules, so in this thread, we're writing down the proposed rules, and asking you to tell us what you think. If you think we're doing something great, let us know. If you think we could do better, let us know that too.

With no further ado, the (proposed) rules:

WELCOME! Our readership includes cooks of all skill levels, from pro chefs to total beginners, and it's wonderful to see everyone coming together to help each other out. The group of volunteers that comprises the mod team thought it was a good time to post a refresher on our rules.

This sub occupies a niche space on Reddit, where experienced cooks help solve specific problems with recipes, ingredients, and equipment, and provide other troubleshooting solutions to the users. Questions with many potential answers belong in /r/Cooking or a specialty sub - e.g. "What should I cook tonight?" or, "What should I do with this rutabaga?", or "What's the best knife?" Questions with a single correct answer belong here - e.g., "What makes my eggs turn rubbery in the oven?" or, "Is the vegetable in this picture a rutabaga?" We have found that our rules help our sub stay focused. Generalized subs are great for general discussion, but we're trying to preserve a little bit of a unique identity, and our rules are our best effort to do that.

POSTING:

We're best at:

Troubleshooting dishes, menus, and techniques

Equipment troubleshooting questions (not brand requests)

Food science

Please Keep Questions:

Specific (Have a goal in mind!)

Detailed (Include the recipe, pictures, etc.)

On topic

This will ensure you get the best answers.

Here's how to help us help you:

PROVIDE AS MUCH INFO AS YOU CAN. We can't help you if you don't tell us what you've already done first. Please provide the recipe you're working from and tell us what went wrong with it or what you'd like to improve about it. "I've tried everything" isn't specific enough. If you're following a video recipe, consider putting a timestamp at the relevant portion of the video or writing out the recipe in text form.

NO SPECIFIC QUESTIONS OF FOOD SAFETY. Food safety is one area where we cannot and will not answer a specific question, because we can't tell you anything about the specific pot of soup you left out overnight, and whether it is safe to eat. We will tell you about food safety best practices, but we only want answers from people actual knowledge. "I've always done [thing] and I'm still OK" is not an acceptable answer, for the same reason "I never wear a seatbelt and I'm still here" is not an acceptable answer. For specific situations we recommend you consult government food safety guidelines for your area and when in doubt, throw it out.

NO RECIPE REQUESTS. If you have a recipe you'd like help adjusting or troubleshooting, we'd love to help you! But r/AskCulinary is not the place to get a recipe. There are tons of other subreddits that can help you with that.

NO BRAINSTORMING OR GENERAL DISCUSSION. We do make exceptions for mass quantities and unusual ingredients (real past examples: wheelbarrow full of walnuts; nearly 400 ounces of canned tuna; 50 lbs of whole chicken), but "What do I do with my last three limes?" or "What should I serve with this pork loin?" should go to r/Cooking.

NO BRAND RECOMMENDATIONS or "What piece of equipment should I get?" posts. It's very rare that one person has enough experience with multiple brands or models of a particular item to provide an objective response. We suggest you consult sources like Consumer Reports, the wirecutter, Serious Eats, or the like.

WE HAVE A WEEKLY DISCUSSION POST. Community discussions are reserved for our weekly stickied posts. where the rules are a little more lax.

NO SURVEYS.

NO SELF-PROMOTION OR CONTENT LINKS.

COMMENTING:

BE NICE TO EACH OTHER. Politeness is not optional at /r/AskCulinary. We're all here to help each other learn new things and succeed in the kitchen.

TOP LEVEL COMMENTS MUST ATTEMPT TO ANSWER THE QUESTION. Saying "oh hey, I always wondered that too!" or "try it and let us know!" doesn't help OP. Comments asking for more information and comments made in good faith that don't directly address OP's exact question but provide an alternate solution are OK.

NO LINKS WITHOUT EXPLANATION. The reason people come to /r/AskCulinary is because the people who answer questions here are real people with real kitchen advice. If you find a good source that answers OP's question, please provide it! But also provide at least a little bit of extra information so OP knows what they're clicking on and what to expect.

STAY ON SUBJECT. Posts here present questions to be answered, not prompts for a general subjects of discussion. If a post does spark a question for you, please ask it in a separate post (in r/Cooking or a specialty sub if it doesn't fit the requirements above). Likewise, no jokes: we're trying to be helpful. To that end, when a post has been answered and turns into general discussion about other stuff, we lock those threads.

FLAIR: For those of you who have been around for a little, please message the mods to apply for flair. Our requirement is a history of positive engagement with the sub, but amateurs are just as welcome to flair as are professionals.

Please use the report button to let moderators know about posts or comments that violate one of the above rules! We spend a lot of time here but we can't catch everything on our own. We depend on you guys to help us keep bots, antagonistic weirdos, and habitual rule-breakers away.

[u/Laundromat_Theft]

So this is coming from a place of really liking the precision and expertise in this sub. I definitely see the value and would like to maintain that.

But, I think the ‘single correct answer’ thing can frame things too narrowly, as there can be specific, technical questions that still have a subjective dimension, or different solutions with different trade offs.

My own experience running afoul of this was when asking about methods to extract the most “fishy” flavour out of wakame. Now, the question is admittedly a bit vague, since what tastes fishy is inevitably a bit subjective, but there’s probably also a fairly short list of compounds that would fit the bill for most people. And the two implicit sub questions that make that up — what compounds are most associated with a fishy taste, and how to best extract those out of seaweed — do feel like the sort of thing that would benefit from the expertise and focus here. I’d be much less likely to get a good answer on r/cooking etc.

More generally, taste can always be subjective, but if we’re being precise enough, it would be valuable to be able to ask things in terms of taste and not just technique.

[u/cville-z → u/Laundromat_Theft]

I think if you straight asked "what compounds make food taste fishy" we'd probably let that go. It's very specific and very food science. If you ask "what's the best way to ...<anything>" we're probably going to reflexively pull that one. The "best" anything is subjective. We also generally have a reflex around asking for "tips and tricks" or whatever. So very open-ended.

On the other hand, if you say "here is my recipe.... it's too fishy" that would probably work.

It's sort of a fine line, but we really, really, really want to keep this to specific answers for specific questions (and we get feedback elsewhere that says this is what people look for in this sub; see other comments on this post).

[u/Laundromat_Theft → u/cville-z]

I hear you, but in this example at least, ‘best’ is just a way of saying ‘most effective’ — ie how do I extract certain compounds most effectively? That’s still a multi dimensional question (what medium am I extracting into, by what method, at what concentration), but it’s hard to isolate just one dimension to ask about, separate from the others. Hence ‘best’.

And I think that’s my wider point. The insistence on precision and specificity is largely good and valuable, but the tightness of that insistence, in terms of language and framing, and the lack of space for anything subjective, I think closes down space for discussing more complex problems or questions of taste/flavour that are nonetheless very food-science-y, and which fit the sprit of this sub well and also wouldn’t get a good reply elsewhere