Data requests are quite a popular question here and provide a lot of value to the community. That said, quite often I feel like a certain percentage of questions are asked by users that have not tried much of anything.
I came across this question on English SE "against single word requests questions" and it really hit home for regarding data requests and Open Data SE.
While I am not in support of getting rid of them whatsoever, making the requirements for asking for a data request a tad more stringent would benefit the community more than they currently are.
With no facts to back this up, I want to say forcing users to do minimal work will weed out a small percent of users that are here for an answer and not to participate.
Also it will free community more to answer/edit/curate areas that need it, rather than continuously responding to one commonly requested tag.
In closing, I personally spend time that I know I can use elsewhere here to better the community, answering data requests that sometimes seem like little to no effort has been put into them. I'm wondering if anyone else does to? If so, what can we do about it?
All of this said, I want to make it clear that if anything is done about data requests questions, we should be careful not to be too stringent/overbearing. I do not want users to turn away because they hit a wall of requirements. I would rather keep it as is and curate/down vote/edit/vote each as they come in, before making this less optimal for people to use.
Edit: I just came across this recent question here about the data request tag. This question is different as it is seeking options/solutions, but if you all feel like it should be closed and we take the conversation there, please let me know.
