This question is prompted by this post on genetic algorithms, but I think the matter applies more generally as well to other metaheuristic methods like annealing, neural networks and the like.
Are these reasonable topics for discussion on this site ? They are weak on pure theoretical content, but they do crop up "when the theory fails", and there's been a fair amount of discussion on theory blogs (see Michael Mitzenmacher, and myself) on whether these should be taught in algorithms classes, which would make them fair game.