Should this site have a back it up rule?

Question

So far, most of the question and answers on this new site are setting the stage for attracting the types of experts who will help make this site a viable Stack Exchange site. Because of the nature of this topic, this site shares much in common with The Workplace SE. Like the workplace, the experts in freelancing don't have freelancing degrees or formal education in freelancing, self-employment, or small business. Like the Workplace SE, many experts are experts based on their experiences alone.

In Good Subjective, Bad Subjective, Stack Exchange talks about how subjectivity is not bad, so long as the community follows the Guidelines of Great Subjective Questions, which are listed near the bottom of the Good Subjective blog post. The key takeaway from the experiences in subjectivity is summarized by the experiences on other Stack Exchange sites:

The folks at Moms4mom owned up to the subjective issue and came up with a set of principles to create useful subjective discussions on parenting: the Back It Up! Principle. Back It Up! means that your answers must be based on either:

• Something that happened to you personally
• Something you can back up with a reference

They talk about how “opinion, by itself, is noise.” They’re not saying that subjective opinions are to be avoided; they’re attempting to mold and shape their inherently subjective Q&A into something constructive, informative and helpful.

While most of the answers I've seen do explain why and how and also share experiences to back up the authors' claims, I have seen some answers that leave much to be desired in this area.

We're in private beta, and in a week or two we'll move to public beta where the site will be temporarily flooded with new people who may be merely curious about this new community. This is by far the most critical period for a new Stack Exchange site, and we should be sure we continue on the right path.

There was a previous private beta of Freelance Workers, which was closed due to lack of quality content. Let's tackle this issue early on and create a site for solving real problems in the world of Freelancing!

Does this site, like The Workplace, Moms4Moms, Programmers SE, and other subjective cousins, need to implement some form of the Back It up rule? How can we as a community enforce this rule in a way that's constructive -- encouraging people to edit instead of delete -- and by exercising patience for those new to Stack Exchange subjectivity guidelines?

Answer 1

Yes, definitely.
So many of the questions here will probably be influenced by law in some way, or will be subjective enough that sources should be given in answers.

I don't think we'd even make it out of private beta without this rule; without it, we'd be swamped by noise and discussion when we hit public beta and the horde of newcomers start asking and answering questions.

EDIT: we've hit public beta, and should start thinking about adding this rule into the FAQ if possible.

Answer 2

As for how to enforce it, I think it is usually sufficient to do one of two things:

1. If you have a better answer you can back up, say so.

2. If you don't have a better answer, make a comment challenging the individual to back it up. If you need to you can add a downvote and a note that you will consider reversing if the question is edited.

Over on DBA there was a guy who gave an answer like "don't use an RDBMS, use NoSQL instead." A bunch of us downvoted him and gave him comments that he needed to flesh it out, and that it was a judgement on the quality and detail of the question. He edited it to discuss why he thought that in this case, and went into some detail. He did a great edit explaining why he said that and a lot of people reversed their downvotes after that.

Answer 3

For technical stuff that sounds reasonable.

For stuff relating to contracts, customers, rates, bidding, payment it seems pretty obvious people will not want to give out much identifying detail.

• I saw a case where a company signed an unlimited-scope unlimited-duration NDA with one client. If they ever disclose 'X used to be our client', even inadvertently or indirectly, they're in potential trouble.

So if you only meant 'aim to avoid subjective-seeming opinions without justification on technical issues', then yes. Otherwise, no, this will be overly limiting.

ADDENDUM: Hiroto proposed a 'back it up' policy but didn't define it except to say 'something you can back up with a reference'. But subsequently he clarifies 'vague non-identifying detail' is ok. The onus is on the proposer to define clearly what he means.