Should general questions about technical issues be on-topic? If so, what subset?

Question

StrixVaria has noted in his answer to The Great Arqade Clean-Up of 2012:

If [technical-isssues] questions are allowed to remain on the site, then grouping them together is a logical thing to do. The same general expertise applies to many of these cross-game (although this isn't always true).

Being familiar with computer hardware and common software misconfiguration is an area of expertise, which is the general basis for what makes a good tag.

In a comment he emphasized the fact that this tag is better than nothing if these questions continue to be allowed. So I want to ask: Should they continue to be allowed? If so, do we need to restrict them based on level of detail or how common they are?

Another set of questions to consider involves scope. Should we allow console tech support and obviously game-specific issues, but rely on Super User for general PC issues? (Or some other subdivision?) Is Gaming the place for generic PC tech support? Do we have the requisite expertise? Conversely, will users suffer if we rely on Super User (et al) for this? Will users suffer if we keep the questions here and don't rely on Super User?

Answer 1

I was going to write up a long answer, but Matthew Reads excellent answer mostly sums up my thoughts on and issues with the tag. So instead, I'll simply throw out a proposal on what our litmus test for tech support questions should be:

Is the issue reproducible, either under clearly defined circumstances, or on a variety of hardware, (the latter can be verified via google or other means), or does it have a clear, unique, and identifiable error code or other message?

In other words, if your game is crashing unpredictably, or simply runs poorly at random, or all the time, it should probably be closed as too localized.

If on the other hand, your game crashes every time you walk into a specific room and only when you walk into that room, or you're receiving an error more specific than 'The Game has Crashed', we can talk.

In short: If your problem is specific enough that someone else is likely to be experiencing it, and would be able to find it based on your description, there's a good chance that it isn't useful just to the asker, and more importantly, that we as a community might have the tools to be helpful.

Answer 2

I'm not a fan of yet another set of ambiguous policies that go unenforced because nobody's sure what counts and what doesn't: we did that with both ITG and game-rec before they were just categorically banned. If we are going to have a policy specific to technical issues questions, I'd like to save us the time and just ban them outright now instead of wasting another 6 months pretending like we can get them under control.

But I don't think we need policies specific to technical issues; our current close reasons adequately cover many of the problematic questions:

• If the question doesn't say what the asker tried, it's not a real question.
• If the question does not provide enough detail to be answerable, it's not a real question.
• If the question is specific to a contrived or obscure set of circumstances, it's too localized.

These, mind you, apply to all questions, not just technical issues. So if anything, I'd like to see more enforcement of general question guidelines instead of giving technical issues questions a pass because they are sometimes, by nature, complicated or hard to answer.

To that end, the main objection I see in comments is that the asker won't necessarily know whether they provided enough detail. That's fine: they don't need to get it right the first time out of the gate, and that's what community moderation is for. When you ask a complicated or vague question, there's a risk you're not going to ask it in a way that makes sense to others: closing, down-voting, and commenting are all ways we can convey that a question needs to be improved.

But if it is essential that users know absolutely whether their question is good enough before asking (even though such a feat is impossible), I think that's a very good argument for banning the class of questions entirely rather than creating a set of nuanced rules that nobody except the people participating in this discussion are going to ever read (much less understand).

Answer 3

This really isn't an answer to the question or intended to be a position about how technical issues should be handled, but in the comments, Oak mentioned he'd like to see some statistics about the technical-issues if we're going to discuss whether or not the whole category of questions should be banned.

If there are other metrics you'd like to see, add them here or ask for them in the comments.

Number of questions tagged technical-issues: 298 (1.4% of total)

• Percent closed but not deleted: 4.4%

• Percent with at least one answer: 90.9%
• Percent with at least one upvoted answer: 86.6%
• Precent with accepted answer: 51.3%

• Percent at least 1 score: 83.2%
• Percent at least 3 score: 43.6%
• Percent at least 5 score: 19.1%

• Percent at least 10 score: 6.0%

• Average current reputation of asker: 2,070¹

Number of questions on Gaming.SE: 20,587

• Percent closed but not deleted: 6.6%

• Percent with at least one answer: 96.9%
• Percent with at least one upvoted answer: 95.3%
• Percent with accepted answer: 73.7%¹

• Percent at least 1 score: 92.3%¹
• Percent at least 3 score: 69.3%¹
• Percent at least 5 score: 45.9%¹

• Percent at least 10 score: 14.7%¹

• Average current reputation of asker: 447¹

^{Note 1: had to use stale SEDE data for this metric}

Answer 4

Here's an example that makes me think the community really needs to make up their mind about this: https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/90151/crysis-2-causes-do-you-want-to-change-the-color-scheme-to-improve-performance#90151.

If these questions are off-topic then fine, but it would help if the "technical-issues" tag wiki said that "your question is almost certainly off-topic", and if the existing questions with the tag were closed.

If the questions are on-topic, then you need to educate the community that they shouldn't be closed/downvoted.

Answer 5

I don't like "technical issues" questions. I downvote most of the ones I see (though I don't go looking for them).

From what I've seen, many "technical issues" questions are

• Too localized. It's only on one person's computer, or is such a rare scenario that only one person is attempting it.
• Don't contain enough information to provide a reasonably useful answer. "Did you upgrade your video card drivers? Did you reboot? Did you re-calibrate the flibber-flobber?" And by the time a question contains super specific details to pinpoint a good answer, the question becomes too localized.

SE Gaming should not be technical support. So I say burninate this class of question.

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I knew that this would be a controversial answer when I posted it. I wanted to post a hardline answer simply to put it on the table. I apologize to the community that I do not have the availability to research the history of this tag and provide an analysis. I would love to know whether this class of question brings good users to the community, or whether they make the internet a better place.

A more middle-of-road answer than burninate could be to close (but not delete) them after a week or so; the OP gets an answer, and the knowledge is retained. Or perhaps to create specific guidelines for what is and is not acceptable for "technical issues" questions, such as was done for ITG questions.

What it comes down to, for me, is that this is a place for Q&A about playing games. But not about hacking games, developing them, or other work outside of the game world. (I can see this being a place for "technical issues" questions related to standard equipment on consoles, but not PCs.)