(Just as a side note, what's rule III?)

When sorting this subreddit by new, the questions can easily be categorised in a few ways:

1) A post that asks for a definition (and most of them can be answered from the first sentence, maybe from the first paragraph on Wikipedia)

2) A post that is built on a misunderstanding of a basic topic (so many questions on inflation or GDP -- these have formulas!)

3) A post that's more fitting in accounting/finance subreddits (especially certain vocabularies that's not widely taught or known in econ)

4) 0 math: I haven't seen a single post asking about any math from a paper in this subreddit for years, even though 99% of economics literature being published these days include top level calculus and stats/econometrics plus machine learning in more recent years

5) A post that can be asked within 3~5 minutes of web search if it can't be answered on Wikipedia

6) A post that can be answered by looking at the FAQ (though that's a reddit-wide problem)

7) A post that asks a theoretical question that can't be answered because of rule II -- such research doesn't exist yet or it's a question on hypothesising about the future (communism/socialism/anarcho syndicalism etc. in year 2050?)

However, there are challenges to this premise. Comparing /r/askscience questions answers to this subreddit would be akin to comparing an adult to a child, because one of the the main challenge is that hard science topics are taught from 1st grade to high school, but econ is taught in some high schools in most (if not all) countries. This would give a much broader background for the general populace that are using /r/askscience subreddit, but that puts /r/askeconomics at a disadvantageous position. Plus, /r/askscience also takes economics questions (one of the flairs) even though there are barely any.

In order to improve this situation, expanding on rule II to questions could also be an option. For example, a question should include/cite a paper or a news article. What do you think?