Are speculative questions on-topic?

Question

There are a few questions on this site about future sets/themes. This site is not affiliated with The LEGO Group and we cannot expect to find a statement from LEGO for every question posted.

The most our members can do is speculate, and until a certain set/theme has been confirmed or discredited there is no right or wrong answer.

It's also important to consider how valuable these questions will be considered to future visitors of the site.

Under the current Stack Exchange guidelines for closing questions these questions can be considered 'not constructive' or 'too localised':

• As of November 2011, should I buy the NXT 2.0 now, or wait and buy the NXT 3.0 later?
• Are there plans to release new trains for AFOL?
• Is LEGO testing the market with the Minifigure Series?
• Is there going to be a lego simpsons advent calendar

Answer 1

The text for "too localized" goes as such:

• This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable

Which for me is a good enough reason to close such questions, and as you'll notice, I've ended up doing so for the NXT 3.0 question, as it was very obvious in that case.

My feeling on the two other questions is slightly different, however, as I feel they are more general in nature, not really asking about what LEGO does right now but more about what they're doing. Still localized in time, but less so. Well, I contradict myself as my first comment on the train one is that it's speculative, and the answers so far indicates that the question is indeed going nowhere. Yet I can't bring myself to close it, not sure why - I'd feel more comfortable if it was closed by regular users, actually.

The question on minifig could be interesting, and seems less speculative, but again, maybe we'll be able to judge from the answers.

Answer 2

I think we should add a custom "Off-topic" reason to cover these - "Off-topic - Speculation" - I didn't catch the question Is there going to be a LEGO Simpsons advent calendar when it was asked, but I don't think we can answer this one until it's either released/announced (along with the other usual Advent Calendars: City, Friends and Star Wars) or not, and eventually it will be "too localised" under the date reason.

While these are often questions we'd like to know the answer to, I don't feel we're ever going to be able to answer them officially before any other source - so we won't be adding any value to the internet.

I've added the following "off-topic" reason, but it needs another mod to approve:

Questions asking when or if sets are going to be released or retired are off-topic because this information is controlled by The LEGO Group and not something we have access to. For more information see Are speculative questions on-topic?.

Answer 3

I have to admit that, since bricks.stackexchange.com is not is good health, I'm trying to generate more questions lately.

I'm trying to approach LEGO from different perspectives and I do indeed ask questions that I would normally not ask. On the other hand those are things that I really would like to know even though, in the case of the Minifigure Series, only an official LEGO statement could really settle the question. So, in a way, it is possible that LEGO has or eventually will releases information proving or disproving this (e.g. through an interview or a YouTube video).