up vote 16 down vote favorite

I made two questions a couple hours ago and was downvoted by some users (even if one of them received enough upvotes to return to 0). When I asked why some people said that lore questions (about games, of course) are not welcome here by some other users. Is it true? Please help me to become a better collaborator of the site. I don't want to keep asking things that are not allowed. Thank you all in advance.

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This is exactly the right place to ask this. – fbueckert Nov 19 '12 at 16:27
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If you decide to delete the -3 question, I'm pretty sure you'll get that rep back. – Steve V. Nov 20 '12 at 2:27
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Tip: If you don't like the reception your lore question gets here, or think it might be better answered elsewhere, try Science Fiction & Fantasy. I personally agree that lore questions are on-topic here, but I find that it's sometimes easier to get a good result by going to Science Fiction & Fantasy instead. – Iszi Feb 11 at 17:52
@Iszi Thank you. I think I will keep those two question where they already are (at least for a while) but for further lore questions I will try Science Fiction and Fantasy (if it looks to fit there). – Rodrigo Guedes Feb 14 at 10:32

3 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

The first thing to note is that we don't all agree here. Lore questions are allowed, but some people disagree with that. More specifically in regards to your question, some people think that lore questions are bad and downvote them.

Another problem, as fbueckert pointed out, is that your question basically describes a hole in the plot of the game and asks for a resolution (hence "poke the plot hole"). The most likely answer is that the writers didn't think of it, which means that your question is likely unanswerable. This probably led some people to vote it down.

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Oh, now I see it! I didn't understand very well what @fbueckert meant (English is not my native language). In that case I myself agree with the downvotes. Thank you all for the explanation! – Rodrigo Guedes Nov 19 '12 at 16:33
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@RodrigoGuedes For what it's worth, don't let downvotes discourage you. On one of the questions, you're still at a net positive for rep gained. Upvotes give you 5 rep, while downvotes only take away 2! Also, nice job on wanting, and trying, to be a better member. There are some who would just as soon give up and go elsewhere. – Fluttershy Nov 19 '12 at 16:50
Thank you, @Fluttershy – Rodrigo Guedes Nov 19 '12 at 16:53
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up vote 5 down vote

Lore questions are definitely allowed based on our current guidelines. But allowed does not necessarily mean universally liked.

Voting (both down and up) is the community's way of deciding how useful a question is. It is very common for questions to get both up and down votes, as some members of the community will find a question useful, and others will not. Downvotes have less reputation impact than upvotes, so even if every question you ask got the same number of up and down votes, you'd still end up gaining rep.

There are a number of users in the community that find many story/lore questions to not be useful. That's fine. As long as you ask questions that are useful to at least some of the community, you're in good shape.

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up vote 4 down vote

As far as I know, lore questions are perfectly fine.

You do have to ask constructive questions that can be sourced (either by external official sources, or in-game content).

Your questions seem to solicit discussion:
Did Morpheus suffered any consequences for his actions?
What was Hades doing by the time Atlas was destroying the Pillar of the World?

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The problem is that I'm not sure if there are some external official sources or in game content that I may have missed. – Rodrigo Guedes Nov 19 '12 at 16:31
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@JQan If they don't have an official source, wouldn't an answer stating "It appears to be a plot-hole, as there is no information to the contrary," or something along those lines, be an acceptable answer? – Fluttershy Nov 19 '12 at 16:48
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@Fluttershy the problem is that it can be hard to prove a negative. It might be hard to know that there isn't any official source that has ever been published about this particular thing. – murgatroid99 Nov 19 '12 at 21:25

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