How can I this question be improved to elicit empirical answers?

Question

My Question https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/24298/why-is-interest-in-the-fields-of-ontology-and-semantics-declining was migrated here from Theoretical CS, where it was considered off-topic. Here, it has been put on hold because "answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions".

I gather that this may be a sensitive topic, and some of the comments were useful, but I still don't understand why it can't be answered with an empirical statement. I was expecting that it could be answered with a reference.

Could someone please help me improve this so that I can determine why a CS prof would think that ontology and semantics are bogus? I can see why such a statement might be inflammatory, but I can't see why it can not be answered with a reference or facts. My question fundamentally boils down to wanting to know if there is an explanation for the trends in the figure:

Answer 1

I don't follow the premise of the question.

1. Google Trend is probably poor at detecting trends within the scientific community.
2. Professors tend to have strong opinions that may or may not be universally correct.

In conclusion, I don't think you have a "real" problem at your hands; and even if you did, you'd be unlikely to get a factual, objective answer. The number of people working on any scientific topic depends more on personal interest and funding opportunities than anyting else, and neither correlates well with objective relevance of the topic (which can't be measured, anyway).

Answer 2

1. You haven't stated the question about the trend.

2. The question about trend is not a good question. Topics get popular and then get less popular. It is common.

3. It is not a computer science question but about more about sociology.

4. The real question that I think you have is if the field is bogus or not. That is not good question either. From time to time fields get hyped and then suddenly people learn the reality doesn't match the claims and the hype collapses and then you get reactions to the hype. Asking if it is bogus or fraud about a field is not a good question, it doesn't make much sense. If you want to learn about a particular result in a field ask about it. If you want to know if it worth to work in a particular field then that is primary pinion based, if you want to know if it worth to do research and learn about the field or peruse a carrier in it then again that is primarily opinion based. Read Good Subjective, Bad Subjective to understand what kind of subjective question can be OK on SE sites.

In short, I don't think the question is salvageable. If you want an answer to your question then the answer to your question is: you are asking the wrong question.

Now what would be a similar better question? You can ask what are the major contributions of the field. You can ask for interesting applications of the field. You can ask for a description of the field and its goals. These might be OK. However, before asking such questions read Wikipedia article to make sure you are not asking something that is already answered on Wikipedia and spend time thinking about what you really want to know and how to ask it in a nice and useful way.