How to ask a [general] example question

Question

How should I write some generic question with a variable word or name should I do:

What did scientist x predict?

or

What did some scientist discover?

or

What did scientist ____ discover?

or some variant?

Answer 1

Example questions should represent questions you would actually like to ask on the site. The convention of using placeholders ("What is the speed limit in [state]?") started when arguments broke out over the specific example rather that the scope it was meant to define. But...

The "How do you [this] a [that]?" problem:

The problem with this convention is that too often questions become *so* generic that they don't help define the site at all. People have a tendency to vote for these easy examples, so when they rise to the top of your list, your site starts to look mundane, nondescript, and uninteresting.

Personally, I would avoid putting placeholders in [brackets] wherever possible. Ask real questions; otherwise, you're just squandering an opportunity to capture that intrigue — that moment when someone looks at your proposal and says, "Whoa! That's my kinda site!"