I’m currently tired, and sketching some thoughts in response, to stimulate further discussion, while wanting to make a better long answer later. (Side note, comments on SE do not garner rep points. Yet comments on Cd are long-form. In this case, I can imagine liking that a long-form comment could still garner rep points. It would incentivize the user to share cursory knowledge when low-energy or pressed for time; redirecting such lower-quality content away from official answers; otherwise, if you want rep points, you would have to post poor quality content as an answer, or come back later, if you remember to.)

Actual answer to Q coming in a sec

These are some notes I will make use of in an answer.

On a general level, has anybody articulated what it means for a question to be "answerable", on Codidact? Even if it is just an informal verbal description. Have any characteristics or synonyms been put forward, for example? If not, perhaps that can be drafted. For example (even if these in turn need further analysis or definition):

• Does the question have one single "correct" answer? (i.e., 'answerability' is connected to an idea of logical truth or correctness: there is only one correct answer, to the exclusion of all false ones. From the perspective of logic, we might say that an answerable question is one that basically has a "truth value".)

• "Objective, not subjective". This is something I would like to think more about. On Philosophy SE, there has been some discussion about how these terms' meaning, while commonly used, are sometimes not very clear when one pries deeper. (For example, if someone asks, as in your example, "What is the difference between good and evil?", if it is decided that this is not answerable, is that because it is not 'objective'? Not necessarily - the form of the question might lead one to conclude that it does ultimately have a correct answer, even if nobody is capable of providing a definitive answer, which is something a little different.)

• I think more theorization can turn up more interesting and subtle ways of analyzing what factors are at play, under the surface, in what we intuitively consider "being answerable".

(more to come in a second)

Regarding what you touch upon when you propose reformulating a question about good and evil with, perhaps, a more scholastic spin: "What does theory X say about good and evil?"

On the one hand, this reminds me of a very early and I think influential post on Philosophy Meta SE in which one of the early moderators (who is still active) made more or less the case that the site could not generate quality content if it became, sort of, something of a free-for-all town hall for self-taught thinkers to speculate on any topic they wanted. That poster argued something near to your point: should we constrain philosophy questions to those of an academic nature, in an attempt to convert what is admittedly a very free and unbounded field, into something objective, like computer programming? (https://philosophy.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/474/friends-we-are-not-philosophers)

(more to come in a sec)

This was in a way to responded to some time later by one of my favorite SE Philosophy contributers, a person who goes by the username JD: https://philosophy.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5194/friends-are-we-not-philosophers-is-this-place-a-bazaar-or-a-cathedral

While both of these posts go over various issues, one can see excerpts in both of them which touch on this theme. The one above re-opens the question of originality, in my opinion: he is asking to some extent if the community is in agreement about what kinds of questions are acceptable, especially ones that indicate a degree of original thought.

I basically stand by this sentiment strongly and I would actuallyh (insecurely) like to claim that my own time on Philosophy SE pushed this to an extreme, as most of my questions were not about "What did Kant think" but rather, "Here is what I think, what do you think?"

Perhaps I'll leave off for now. i have spent a lot of time on Philosophy SE, so maybe I can benefit the question by trying to distill my thoughts into a compact and clear form. All I would like to say for now is...

Philosophy is in some ways more like mathematics than people might realize... after all, people want to know what the Truth is (often). And arguably, it is we philosophers more than anyone who are deeply concerned with what the form and nature of valid argumentation even is. So, if you describe yourself as a "layperson", I guess I would say, i think people deep in philosophy see original philosophical argumentation as far more akin to computer programming, than a sort of subjective airing of whimsical contemplations. That is to say, there is a correct and an incorrect answer, inherently - and a person is capable of generating such an answer on their own. They do not need to reference academic literature (it helps, though).

I would really appreciate if anyone could reach out to any users on Philosophy Stack Exchange and alert them, perhaps via comments or even a Meta post, about this new site. I believe there are others who would more than happily migrate the nearly torrential amount of original thinking and discussion we were having over there, to over here. I would especially appreciate if someone would alert users JD, Kristian Berry and Bumble that I was banished and am now trying to rebuild a better version of Philosophy SE over here now, and I think they might appreciate joining in. Thank you. (I have no way of contacting them.)

Thanks for these initial thoughts. Comment threads are not a great way to engage with multi-faceted feedback, so when you have a chance to write an answer, I'll respond in more depth there. I was struggling a little with how to phrase things; subjective/objective might not be the right frame but it's what I was able to reach for. I'm sure that actual philosophers have a better framing and vocabulary for the things I'm struggling with. Basically, I don't think "is X good" without any further restriction is the kind of question that is going to work well in a Q&A format or in more formal philosopher settings -- so whatever y'all do to help focus conversations in other settings, I'd like to talk about here. Doesn't mean either the situations or the responses are the same, but I hope you can help us find a path.