32

What should be done with a game-rec question posted to the site? Please only give short and simple answers that the community can then enforce as a policy. This is not the place for discussion - other meta-threads have already done that.

The answer with the most upvotes in this discussion will be used as the chosen policy - see this preparation question for justification and explanation. The chosen policy will be a long-term one and will remain in effect until the moderators decide otherwise, as also decided in that other thread.

This question will be closed and the votes tallied on December 23rd, 2010.


For example of what game-recommendations questions look like, see questions tagged on the main site.

Before voting, I strongly recommend reading the various discussions on this topic here on meta, all tagged .


Today is December 23rd, 2010. Vote tally:

  • Close all game-recs unconditionally as shopping recommendation: 74
  • Allow game-recs that are specific enough (withdrawn): 70
  • Only allow game-recs with accessibility constraints: 42
  • Unconditionally allow them: 41
  • Close and point to area-51 proposal: 14
  • Leave the choice to the moderators: 10
  • Close as off-topic, redirect to a few select CW topics: 7
  • Invert the closing life-cycle (withdrawn): 3

Unfortunately, the numbers show the amount of division among our users regarding this decision - but in my eyes any decision is better than no decision, and I will go on to enforce the chosen policy until the elected moderators decide differently.

To anyone who still supports game-rec questions: I urge you to commit to the game-rec area51 site (notice this is a referral link; if you don't like me just go to the proposal directly).

42
  • 12
    REMINDER TO EVERYONE: As per Oak's preparatory question, downvotes will not contribute to a given solution's score.
    – sjohnston
    Dec 2, 2010 at 15:10
  • 2
    Downvotes do affect the order in which proposals are ordered, however.
    – badp
    Dec 2, 2010 at 15:20
  • 1
    @Bruce: Simple: [ view this question by newer posts first ](meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/1491?tab=newest#tab-top).
    – badp
    Dec 2, 2010 at 22:44
  • 1
    @Grace if the future mods will perceive the chosen policy as too harmful after it has been in effect for a while, they could start a new poll - as the 2nd sentence in the 2nd paragraph says.
    – Oak
    Dec 8, 2010 at 18:15
  • 1
    I would rather we don't implement something harmful in the first place for them to have to deal with. But I suppose it's far too late for that discussion.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 8, 2010 at 18:17
  • 1
    I have to be honest, this vote was not conducted with enough preparation and for-planning and the result has been disastrous. I'm going to have to ask, at this time, that we abandon this vote and reconvene when we have a better understanding of what it is that we want to accomplish, and a better method for doing so.
    – tzenes
    Dec 14, 2010 at 16:36
  • 1
    @tze I think it's too late for closing. We had a preparatory question to come up with criticism, now the ball is rolling. We can use the feedback for next matters, but honestly I feel the single worst thing we can do is wait until we come up with the mythical Perfect Policy Process to get a Pretty Perfect Policy out of it.
    – badp
    Dec 14, 2010 at 22:03
  • 1
    @badp I cannot think of anything being worse than disenfranchising our users.
    – tzenes
    Dec 14, 2010 at 23:44
  • 1
    @tzenes Let's remove the close button then.
    – badp
    Dec 15, 2010 at 7:17
  • 5
    I'm starting to side more with not restarting the vote. I stand by my decision in convincing the policy to be removed because as a community member and as a moderator, it would be irresponsible of me to let a hole-filled policy be implemented simply because of my own failure to fully explain the problem beforehand and the consequent failure of the system to provide any means to validate the enforceability of a broken policy. Letting the voting proceed as if there wasn't anything critically wrong with the policy follows the same ignorance as the meaningless law which the policy proposes.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 15, 2010 at 15:39
  • 2
    Hmm. I'm not sure I like closing this question. I realize @tzenes has issues with the one answer getting pulled out, but I think it is important to note that a) he did not vote for that answer, and b) no one who did vote for that answer has complained of being disenfranchised. Personally, I voted for it and I have no problem with it being withdrawn by the original poster.
    – au revoir
    Dec 15, 2010 at 17:25
  • 3
    @tzenes I'm not trying to sabotage this vote and create unrest within the trust of people in the system. And I honestly don't believe I have done so. What we're doing here is a basic informal poll done by a fairly lax community. Maybe some users are hurt, while others will read the reason and realize "Oh, hey, that was a good idea to remove it", and yet others will just shrug and move on. It's even written in the second paragraph, that if the policy is determined as such it may be overturned regardless of its initial support. Letting it run through first wouldn't even be pointless formality.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 15, 2010 at 18:00
  • 2
    @tzenes I'm not seeing where people are actually being misled. There's no underhanded trickery, no hidden ploy, no attempt to cast attention elsewhere. We made a mistake, we employed measures to correct it, and we announced that the mistake happened so that people are aware of it. We're being very honest here about what happened, and we have not changed anything about our promise to make a decision, unless we actually delay said decision. And thus far, many users are satisfied with this. Users from both factions, in fact.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 15, 2010 at 19:10
  • 2
    We picked an informal system and people understood that it was going to be informal and that the options may change over the course of the 3 weeks. This isn't a flaw that makes this system unusable for our purposes, because we don't need some super-complicated, rigidly structured election system to make this policy. A flexible, dynamic poll is a functional system and we have never advertised it as anything more static. We are treating their votes the same as everyone else's. They don't get to be more valuable just because there were a lot of them in one week.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 15, 2010 at 19:44
  • 3
    As I tend to agree with Grace, I'm voting to re-open this question. I do not consider this abuse of mod-power since there's a 3/5 re-open vote at the moment and Grace would have also voted the same - so that's two of us, and we both have >3k rep. All that said, @tzenes, I do understand your disapproval - it's just that I, like Grace, do not see it with the same amount of... gravity, I suppose. In any case I think that it's better to let this poll finish and then have the new mods change the chosen policy if they want, than to outright cancel this.
    – Oak
    Dec 15, 2010 at 22:30

10 Answers 10

65

The solution is simple: consider game-recs are shopping recommendations. We don't do the latter, so we don't do the former.

I propose a new close reason for emphasis, so that askers don't start arguing on the close reason blurb:

Shopping list

This question asks for buying or playing recommendations. List questions are not suitable for this site and are better handled on our chatroom.

The first link should really only link to a page with Grace's essay.

30
  • 1
    I dig it!!!!!!! (15 chars...)
    – Ivo Flipse
    Dec 2, 2010 at 11:18
  • 9
    The only issue I see with this is that using the chat room has a higher rep requirement than asking questions.
    – Malabarba
    Dec 2, 2010 at 12:23
  • 3
    @Bruce - true but it's not a particularly high requirement ;)
    – ChrisF
    Dec 2, 2010 at 14:16
  • 3
    Could there be a chatroom called "Game Recommendations" which would be accessible to anyone? I don't know if it would work or if it would just turn into chaos, but it might be worth a try.
    – Malabarba
    Dec 2, 2010 at 15:06
  • 5
    @Bruce We figured that the one issue with that is that there are more people in the main chat room, and a lot more activity in general. A separate Rec Room is possible to get frozen for inactivity. Plus, the majority of people (if not all) opposed to game rec are only opposed to its presence on the parent Q&A, and have been happy to help in the main chat room.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 2, 2010 at 15:08
  • 4
    The rep requirement shouldn't be changed for the chat room. A new user can easily gain rep as is without cluttering up the site. We're not metacritic. If you're going to demand a game rec from the community, you should start by becoming a contributing member of the community.
    – Christian
    Dec 2, 2010 at 15:29
  • 1
    I don't think it's bad to have a minimal rep requirement to get help on Chat. It shows you are willing to help others in exchange for getting help yourself.
    – Ivo Flipse
    Dec 2, 2010 at 16:42
  • 2
    also +1 for dealing with it in the most generic sense possible! Dec 2, 2010 at 17:02
  • 1
    If you post a question in the chatroom, aren't you only going to get answers from people who happen to be in the chatroom at that moment?
    – Kyralessa
    Dec 4, 2010 at 17:48
  • 2
    @Kyralessa I'm afraid so. After all you can't get answers from people who don't visit the site either, now, can you?
    – badp
    Dec 4, 2010 at 18:42
  • 2
    @Kyra Keep in mind that chat transcripts are maintained forever, so even if nobody is in the chat room at the time, if someone comes in later they can read your question, and they can answer with an @ comment and it will show up in your mailbox when you return.
    – bwarner
    Dec 5, 2010 at 16:52
  • 2
    As I've written before, I consider chat extremely unsuitable for recommendations. Even if we decide to prohibit all game-rec questions, I think redirecting to chat is a terrible idea.
    – Oak
    Dec 9, 2010 at 21:14
  • 2
    I guess the area51 game-rec suggestion... or nothing.
    – Oak
    Dec 9, 2010 at 22:04
  • 2
    My opinion on the whole "engine vs. game-rec" is that it only breaks because we have an established meaning for votes that is scaled to the full site, a meaning which doesn't match the needs of recs that are rated on scales of the individual questions. The issues are not with the engine, but with the engine in conjunction with our standard Q&A. We can't house them together, but if game-rec has its own home then we largely cancel the big Values Dissonance issue as well as the scale problem. At least, that's my take on it.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 10, 2010 at 10:56
  • 1
    I agree with @Oak that pointing the person to area51 might be best. It's not very friendly, but it's better than the chat and, if worded carefully, a good deal of people will end up checking it out. The one disadvantage I can think of: That might cause a lot of cases of commit-and-forget.
    – Malabarba
    Dec 10, 2010 at 16:34
54

This policy has been withdrawn from the running

Due to the overwhelming quantity of flaws that outweigh the positives of the policy Allow game-rec as Community Wiki if they are specific enough to only have a few answers, it is now withdrawn as an option. These flaws include but are not limited to:

  • Community Wiki cannot be enabled on questions by the author, requiring hefty moderator intervention
  • The asker is incapable of determining whether the question is appropriate due to an inherent lack of knowing the answers
  • The majority of game-rec would remain closed, and most specifically the majority of game-rec that would help the greater number of people
  • The arbitrary measure of potential answer quantity leads to conflict, resulting in no change from our current situation
  • Perhaps most importantly, quantity is not an effective measure of broadness - questions with equivalently broad scopes (i.e. just swap Platform A for Platform B) can attract completely different question quantities. This gaping hole in the policy is actually a very common incident that will likewise lead to many disputes on both the parent site and the Meta site

As a result of the previous point, the policy is impossible to enforce without either the letter of the law (low answer quantity rec are allowed) or the spirit of the law (narrowly scoped rec are allowed) being violated in a consistent fashion. The policy cannot successfully accomplish what it is intended to do, and would result in continued conflict which the policy is incapable of defending.

Allowing game recommendations is still viable

We are sorry for the inconvenience and the effect of this on the many supporters of this proposal. Please understand that this decision was done in the interest of the site and community to function, not as a method to support either side of the debate.

The numerous flaws which cause this policy to be unviable have little to do with the nature of game recommendations. So if you still want them, please consider redirecting your support to the unconditional allowance of game recommendations as if they were like any other question we deal with.

Alternatively, if you still feel that there needs to be some other form of limitation beyond the normal standards we have for other questions, feel free to develop a new criteria besides answer quantity and propose it as its own option.


I believe game-rec questions should be kept open (as community-wiki) as long as they are very specific. Questions not specific enough (examples follow) should be closed as too subjective and the chatroom should be recommended.

The reason is that if the question is specific enough, it ceases to be a huge list, it doesn't abuse the site's resources any more than regular questions, and it also becomes a lot less subjective.
|Edit here| As a general rule: If the request is specific enough to have only a few answers, definitely less than 15, than it should be kept open. If, just by looking at the question, you can tell there are 30+ answers for it, close it. This is not dependant on the community's ability to answer, but rather on the amount of options available. It is subjective on the moderator's ability to pre-emptively identify whether the number of answers will be large or not. To those who think that's too subjective, there's also ChrisF's answer.

For example, I think it's a shame that this question got closed. It's a lot more specific than just "DS and puzzle", and isn't that subjective.

On the other hand, this question is clearly too subjective, and would have suffered from all the flaws associated to big-lists.

Unlocked - in case anyone wants to continue in comments. However, it will be locked if people attempt to rollback the original proposer's decision to withdraw this policy.

94
  • 7
    I would shy away from sustaining a grey area. If you want to get a recommendation, come have a chat in the Chatroom. Else good luck elsewhere
    – Ivo Flipse
    Dec 2, 2010 at 14:14
  • 4
    Note that it is no longer possible for ordinary users to mark a question as community wiki. Because of this, moderator intervention would be required in every case of game-rec.
    – sjohnston
    Dec 2, 2010 at 15:15
  • 8
    Terrible solution. You just made the criteria for closing the question totally independent of the question itself, and instead entirely dependent on the community's ability to answer it.
    – Christian
    Dec 2, 2010 at 15:40
  • 8
    I have to agree with @IvoFlipse. Either all questions or none. Gray areas will only lead to future conflict of the exact same nature we've been having already. Dec 2, 2010 at 16:53
  • 3
    How is a very specific game-rec distinguishable from a identify-this-game question?
    – badp
    Dec 2, 2010 at 17:13
  • 2
    @Bruce Connor They are indistinguishable. Anybody could fool this entire site and bypass the game-rec controversy by simply disguising his game-rec questions as identify-this. "I'm looking for a game where..."
    – Christian
    Dec 2, 2010 at 17:49
  • 2
    @tzenes: On the other stuff: When the question is restrictive enough, voting due to popularity isn't that much of a problem (the question was very accurate, so it's easier to rate answers based on accuracy). Again, a very accurate question does value facts over opinions. I need a game that follows the following criteria is asking for facts, as long as the criteria are restrictive enough there will be little space for opinions (sure, "little" is more than "zero", but a lot of regular questions leave a little space for opinions too).
    – Malabarba
    Dec 3, 2010 at 18:26
  • 4
    I can see 15 being a method of evaluation. But what actually makes it a good method of evaluation? I know I'm repeating myself here, but why is it a good idea to shield ourselves from the questions which we stand the greatest potential to actually receive answers for? Restricting game-rec to only the questions which few answers exist, what purpose does this serve? To clutter up the site with the most esoteric of questions which may never get those answers?
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 3, 2010 at 18:51
  • 2
    @Grace:Either way, keeping an esoteric question allows us to help someone who might not have found an answer by himself, while filtering out most of the "just lazy" cases. When a question "happens to make a fair enough number of qualifying games", it probably (but not certainly) already has several lists somewhere. The criteria can (and maybe should) be improved, I just think it would be a shame to close questions that we can really help with and the answer is not easy to find (if at all).
    – Malabarba
    Dec 3, 2010 at 23:33
  • 3
    Why is it only a shame to close questions which we can help with when the answer is not easy to find? If someone has difficulty finding the answer on their own, does it really matter whether it's because there are no resources versus because that person already played the 40 games listed elsewhere and wants to know what else there is? What makes helping one person with an exotic taste so valuable that we can allow it under restricted circumstances but not a question that can help potentially hundreds of people with not-so-exotic tastes?
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 6, 2010 at 16:19
  • 7
    Out of all the possibilities, this is the absolute worst one. I would rather allow them unconditionally than deal with this ridiculous idea. I'm in disbelief that this "solution" has such strong vote support. I'm disgusted. Dec 7, 2010 at 3:53
  • 3
    This is the criteria defining phase. We're past the preliminaries... that's what the past 4 months have been. The whole reason we're doing this now is to get things settled and defined instead of the existing "policies", which I might remind you that we started off as a non-specific "It is acceptable if it is specific enough". The purpose is to bring an end to all of this, and prolonging that by needing a second vote is not productive.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 7, 2010 at 18:27
  • 3
    I vote that this answer be discounted from the tallying at the end of all of this because it's such a disgracefully terrible option that essentially leaves us off EXACTLY where we have been already since the inception of this site. This isn't a solution at all; it's just nonsense. Dec 7, 2010 at 19:06
  • 6
    You are free to withdraw your suggestion if you feel that it is too dangerous to even be considered as an option anymore. If you plan to do so, I will assist you in editing the post to summarize the issues that have been brought up over these 60-some comments.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 9, 2010 at 16:31
  • 6
    @Grace Yes, you have won me over.
    – Malabarba
    Dec 9, 2010 at 17:54
43

Let them be answered; don't close them. (unconditionally)

At some points, it seems like people are losing sight of why they even want to allow game recommendations in the first place. And unless I'm completely mistaken, the reason we want to allow game recommendations is because we want to provide help to people who are lacking of the next game they want to play.

It is more conducive to that goal of helping people if we simply allow them without so many hoops to jump through. Restricting things based on the quantity of potential answers or the assumed specificity of the scope are compromises made with the illusion of satisfying both sides, but they don't really do that well. We transform the argument of "These do/do not belong here" into "This is specific/not specific enough", and the fighting simply continues. That kind of solution leads us to all the same problems we already deal with. And the end result is that the majority of people who would come here for game recommendations would still have everything closed.

The fact is, all the same channels that we would direct these "broad scope" users to? They all work equally well for the "narrow scope" users! All these "compromises" we develop serve to do little more than make the process very uncomfortable to the majority of users and may also produce the image of a very elitist community. After all, if those avenues work for narrow, why do they get the privilege to ask on the parent Q&A?

Forget the middle ground, it doesn't work. If we want game recommendations, we should allow them full scale.

11
  • While I approve of encouraging additional options, I think the opinion needs a little reasoning to back it up.
    – sjohnston
    Dec 3, 2010 at 20:14
  • @sjohnston I'll back this up. I'd actually prefer this route before I'd take something that closes things unless they're "specific enough". Really bad broad repositories are no different than overly broad questions of other types, they are too broad to answer effectively and we have a Not-A-Real-Question close reason for just that. But if it's not too broad, that just means there are more possible answers which makes it easier to give people what can help, which is our very goal as a site. There is a wide area in game-rec in which broad scope is actually better.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 3, 2010 at 20:51
  • 6
    Or, to summarize it: if game-rec are acceptable and we consider them valuable, I think it's more conducive to our ability to serve them if we don't make it such a hassle to ask them and get meaningful results. Bad recs have the same flaws that other bad questions do. Why be elitist and only allow recs which are hard to answer and which only a handful of the users on the site stand a chance of knowing any qualifiers? Why make it harder to provide the services we are trying to advertise?
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 3, 2010 at 20:54
  • 10
    The other main advantage of this route is that if we simply choose to have a blanket acceptance, then there's no dispute. With arbitrary guidelines to judge on, we're going to just see more bickering between people, just it's going to be on whether a topic really is or is not specific enough. We'll be fighting the same, stupid battle that has been going on for the past 4 months and is the reason why we're trying to make a final decision in the first place, and why it's being established with no appeal for at least a year.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 3, 2010 at 21:07
  • @Grace Note Excelent, that my point. If we are going to accept this, we should accept all. that the point of getting a separate "Gaming Recommendations" site.
    – DavRob60
    Dec 3, 2010 at 21:39
  • @Grace Can you edit that in to the answer?
    – C. Ross
    Dec 3, 2010 at 22:08
  • @CRoss Which part?
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 3, 2010 at 22:16
  • I made it a wiki
    – DavRob60
    Dec 3, 2010 at 22:19
  • @grace @cross Excellent supporting comments Grace. I agree that these should be added/summarized in the answer itself. (I'll do it tomorrow, when I'm back on a PC, if I haven't been beaten to the punch.
    – sjohnston
    Dec 4, 2010 at 7:01
  • 9
    All or None. No compromise. Dec 4, 2010 at 17:06
  • 2
    +1 for being a sane solution.
    – Christian
    Dec 7, 2010 at 14:52
37

While I agree with @badp in general there are some cases where I think a game recommendation question might be OK.

The ones that spring to mind are requests for games that can be played by people with disabilities either physical (visual or motor control issues), or behavioural.

In these cases it's not just a case of "I like X, what else will I like", or "my PC has this spec, what will run" but asking for a game that will meet a very particular set of needs.

UPDATE

I would be the first to admit that this isn't an ideal solution as you will get people arguing over where the line should be drawn. An "all or nothing" policy is much easier to enforce as there is no debate.

If the Game Rec site takes off then the question becomes moot - all game recommendation questions go there and none are allowed here.

22
  • 9
    I agree that accessibility is a special case. A crappy computer however doesn't make you disabled, so I wouldn't support that border line
    – Ivo Flipse
    Dec 2, 2010 at 14:13
  • @Ivo - On reflection I think that I wouldn't either.
    – ChrisF
    Dec 2, 2010 at 14:14
  • 6
    Would it be accurate to summarize this as "We basically call them off-topic, but allow truly exceptional questions", wherein there has to be a very good reason behind being an exception to our rule besides just "This is slightly more specific than that one"?
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 2, 2010 at 14:26
  • @Grace - You could put it like that ;)
    – ChrisF
    Dec 2, 2010 at 14:28
  • @Christian - you can (usually) do something about a low spec machine. You can't do something about a disability.
    – ChrisF
    Dec 2, 2010 at 15:54
  • 1
    You could fly an airplane through this back door. Would this question get closed?. "I like to take my old crappy laptop with me on airplane flights to play games on. The problem is I don't have a USB mouse, the space bar is broken, I'm terrible at games, I get migraines from staring at the screen too intently, and I hate to read. Are there any games I could play that would accommodate these specific needs on my next flight?"
    – Christian
    Dec 2, 2010 at 16:00
  • 1
    @Christian - yes "Too Localised".
    – ChrisF
    Dec 2, 2010 at 16:02
  • @ChrisF Closed by whom? It would take an incredible amount of discernment to detect these kinds of questions when they're deliberately dressed up to appear otherwise.
    – Christian
    Dec 2, 2010 at 16:10
  • 9
    I spent many years working as a graduate student in Computer Science and a large part of my focus was on creating games for children with Cognitive Disabilities Beyond learning how effective video games can be at combating the psychological disabilities caused by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and FASD I learned that gamers are a bad group to ask about helpful games. Talking with psychologists allowed my to understand (and design) games that were more appropriate. I realize that people with disabilities, children, loved ones are sensitive topics but I don't think that makes these questions appropriate
    – tzenes
    Dec 2, 2010 at 17:57
  • Touché for the disabled kids, I change my mind based on what @tzenes just said [†: I apparently enjoy editing in acutes]
    – Ivo Flipse
    Dec 2, 2010 at 18:15
  • Now that tzenes has expertly dealt with the only example of an acceptable question given, are there any others?
    – Christian
    Dec 2, 2010 at 22:04
  • 1
    I'd actually disagree with @Tzenes in general., while conceding his specific point. While it is absolutely true that we as a community are completely unsuited to help the sort of children he describes, this does not make us unable to help, for instance, an adult who has recently lost the use of one arm and is looking for games that can be played one handed - for one example. Not all disabilities are created equal, and questions of accessibility are not the same as questions of assistance. We are well equipped in many cases for the former. Not the latter. Dec 2, 2010 at 22:21
  • @LessPop As if anything about a game depended on a player's number of arms. External factors like these should have absolutely no bearing on game recs. The only reason these examples aren't being shot down more rapidly and with more fervor is for fear of looking insensitive.
    – Christian
    Dec 2, 2010 at 22:38
  • @Christian Well, actually, yes. Now given, there are alternate control schemes of all sorts floating around these days, but different people prefer to address disabilities and accessibility concerns in different ways. To perhaps use an example that isn't so readily short circuited by adaptive hardware, not all games offer adjustments suited to assisting those with certain debilitating visual impairments, but some do. Sites like AbleGamers speak to the specific needs, and the widely varied success of games in meeting them better than I ever could though. Dec 2, 2010 at 22:59
  • @Christian on top - Off-topic, belongs on boardgames. Dec 2, 2010 at 23:48
10

Can we make a specific type of Close and point them to a specific route, hopefully something like the proposal for a Stack Exchange Gaming Recommendations found here: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/20517/game-recommendations

Rather than try and be subjective which can be off-putting to new or any users, just close them all and point them somewhere where they can get their question answered, or just move them directly to the gaming recommendations site if it is on the Stack Exchange platform.

UPDATED to point to the existing Area 51 proposal.

7
  • 2
  • Guess I should have researched that, a bit more, guess I'll make some edits. Dec 2, 2010 at 14:48
  • 1
    I think "Stack Exchange Gaming Recommendations" would be the ideal, but some energy should be put into it to make sure it open some day. Then, those questions would need to be migrated instead of "mak[ing] a specific type of Close".
    – DavRob60
    Dec 2, 2010 at 15:04
  • Normally on Super User we would leave a comment directing users to the alternative SE-sites, I don't think we need to change the Close UI to enable something similar
    – Ivo Flipse
    Dec 2, 2010 at 16:47
  • @Ivo check this blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/new-question-migration-paths
    – DavRob60
    Dec 2, 2010 at 16:58
  • Those weren't in place several months ago @DavRob60
    – Ivo Flipse
    Dec 2, 2010 at 17:15
  • I agreed with this proposal and I am committed, but meanwhile, what should we do? Use the chat only? Or wait quietly until it goes to beta?
    – BrunoLM
    Dec 11, 2010 at 0:02
10

Just Pick Already

We've discussed, we've argued, we've voted, and we've had problems with all of them.

I give up. I would like to cast my vote to empower our Mods to decide and enforce a policy on Game-Recs. I don't care if its Allowed. I don't care if its Off Topic. I don't care if its some gray area in between.

Even if its a flawed policy, it can be revisited later by our next mod team, or in a year, or whenever.

Please just choose one, any one, and enforce it. I'll use my close/open vote to help.

1
  • 1
    Yes! I was going to post exactly the same thing. I don't care what the majority opinion is, I care about the opinion of the people that have the most invested in this site. We will soon have a chance to elect moderators. I would like those moderators to make the decision. In the meantime, I'm fine with our current moderators making their own decision, with the understanding that it can be changed after the elections.
    – bwarner
    Dec 16, 2010 at 1:06
6

We could set 2 team:

  1. The Game Recommendations Close Squad (GRCS) will close those question as soon as they are asked or reopened.
  2. Then, the Game Recommendations Liberation League (GRLL) will reopen them as soon as they notify the question was closed.

That way, we will have a balanced policy. With some practice we could make the [closed] mark blink.

3
  • 3
    I thought this was the current solution.
    – sjohnston
    Dec 7, 2010 at 22:43
  • Indeed, it is!!!
    – DavRob60
    Dec 8, 2010 at 0:17
  • 2
    +1 for balance, but only if I get a flashy 'gang tag' badge identifying me as a member of the Squad. Dec 8, 2010 at 15:08
6

I propose that we create a couple of community-FAQ like questions that cater to those that favor game-recommendations.

These would amongst others give users:

  • good resources for discovering games or finding similar ones,
  • explain you can discuss these things on our own Chat channel,
  • a list of resources, such as Gametrailers, Metacritic and other resources for finding reputable opinions about games you might like.

These questions should teach users to find this information themselves, rather than spelling it out for them. This is really what this site is all about: learn from your fellow gamers!

New additions to the FAQs should be discussed on Meta or on chat and these should be created by mods (as they need to be community wiki).

Any other recommendation questions are closed as off-topic, following @badp's suggestion.

1
  • 3
    I think this is a good idea, but personally, I don't see why this has to be a separate choice from badp's proposal. A question like "What resources are available for discovering games" is not strictly game-rec. It does suffer from the usual issues that all list questions do, but I think it will prove useful, and provide a good outlet for all that game-rec energy. And being a one-off special case and (presumably) community wiki, we don't really have to worry as much about reputation or vote pollution.
    – sjohnston
    Dec 2, 2010 at 19:47
1

One thing that I haven't yet seen considered is that a goodly portion of our game and hardware recommendation questions are being migrated from Superuser.

It's no good for a question to be migrated here, only to have it become closed. The folks at SuperUser need to know to not push such questions here, should we decide that game rec questions should be closed.

3
-5

Voting for Game rec ? Easy.. rate 1 to 5 + 80 character comment. that's it.

3
  • 4
    Could you clarify what you're proposing here? I'm not sure what you mean by "rate 1 to 5".
    – sjohnston
    Dec 2, 2010 at 22:39
  • As it seems MMO-Tragic isn't going to clarify, I'll try... My guess is that he means "Allow game rec questions unconditionally. Each answer should be a single game recommendation. People should then add comments to the answers, including a 1-5 point rating of the answer and comments to back up that rating (of a maximum of 80 characters)."
    – sjohnston
    Dec 4, 2010 at 7:09
  • I only got this alert recently. rate 1 to 5 i thought would be self explanatory. 1= rubbish, 5=awesome and an 80 character comment... not much more to explain....
    – angryITguy
    Oct 8, 2011 at 2:13

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