Transparency note: question about existence of "online only sugar daddies" deleted

Question

We had a question about whether "online only sugar daddies" exist and how to avoid getting scammed. It got a few answers one of which got 3 upvotes and the rest either 0 or 1.

The OP and one or two commenters felt that the result could be counter-productive: people reading them might not get a clear message about the risks, and the OP asked for deletion. This required mod intervention given the upvoted answers, and normally we don't do that as it's unfair to the people who already spent time answering.

I've thought about it a bit and decided to delete, albeit with some hesitation. I'm posting here so that we can discuss it and possibly reverse the decision if people feel strongly.

My overall feeling was that in addition to the end result not being particularly helpful, the part of the question about how to avoid being scammed was a bit unfocused anyway and hence possibly off-topic.

Question link for those with 10K reputation: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/142594/do-online-only-sugar-daddies-actually-exist-how-not-to-get-scammed

Answer 1

I support your decision to delete this question.

As we have seen on this site in recent years, there seem to be a lot of young women who, desperate for income, run across maybe an article about someone who receives "gifts" for doing something easy. They then go searching for a similar situation themselves, and of course run straight into scams.

We know that it is nearly all scams. We get questions about it all the time, and many have opined that the system should just pop up with a "Yes, scam!" warning every time the words "sugar daddy" are typed into a question.

The bar for "existence" is very low; if we ask if something exists, then if you can find one example, the answer is "yes, it exists." But of course, that doesn't really begin to tell the true story at all.

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So far, I have left the moral component out of my discussion, but it is time to bring it in. On Stack Exchange, there have been issues raised with the appropriateness of some of the topics, which is a particular problem when they appear out-of-context on the Hot Network Questions list. I can understand that some people would be uncomfortable when they arrive at our site looking for information on finances, and instead are shown a bunch of questions about sugar daddies.

For me, I don't mind the usual sugar daddy questions too much. They are coming from people who are in bad situations, and either need to be headed away from a bad path, or they need to be guided to their next steps after being scammed. I'm happy that we can help them.

However, this question did not come from someone looking for help. It instead asked, "If yes [it exists], what should someone seeking a sugar daddy relationship look for, and what steps can they take to identity and avoid scams?" I think that outlining the "proper" way to enter a sugar daddy relationship is outside the line of decency and is off-topic for our site.

Answer 2

I answered that question. I have no objection to the deletion.

scams and sugar-daddy are two of my top three tags. The challenge you describe is accurate - for those particular forms of fraud how do we provide a good answer to OP so they don't get robbed while reducing the redundant and repeated questions?

Would it be sufficient to make a tag description or tag-wiki edit to state that within the scope of Money.SE sugar-relationships are automatically considered a scam or fraud and askers are advised to cease contact and not enter into such relationships?