Usage of 'if' in two sentences

'It may be wondered if the scope is too wide.'
'It may be wondered if the scope is not too wide.'

Do these two sentences mean the same thing?

Solution 1:

Yes,

like FumbleFingers mentioned above, such pairs have the same meaning. In this case, they both mean that a knowledgable and impartial judge could easily think that the scope of Foo is too wide.

It seems odd that two conditional sentences whose protases are opposites are actually equivalent.

However, in these two sentences, you don't mean that

We can wonder in the future about some other unknown thing if and only if we discover that the scope of Foo is too wide.

What you actually mean is that

It is already reasonable to wonder “Is the scope of Foo too wide?”

The questions “Am I too late?” and “Am I not too late?” are effectively synonyms, because the real information that people want is the same in both cases: in both cases, the questioners want to know if they are still early enough to do something or if they missed their chance.

They're not complete synonyms. The second way of asking is a little more hopeful, although still nervously focused on the lateness. The answers “yes” or “no” would mean opposite things in either case. Still, you shouldn’t answer negative questions in English with a yes or no in the first place: it’s much clearer and more helpful to give an full answer like “You still have 5 minutes” or, “Sorry, he already left.”

In your example, the question is being talked about abstractly and there’s no possibility at all of a short answer causing any confusion. Thus, they’re effectively synonyms. Either one should be followed with additional information and reasoning that irrefutably establishes how the scope of Foo is in fact not too broad, bringing the nay-sayers into the writer's camp.