Timeline for Do we still like 'Identify This Game' questions?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
21 events
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| Jun 15, 2020 at 8:58 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:10 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://gaming.stackexchange.com/ with https://gaming.stackexchange.com/
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| Aug 26, 2011 at 5:22 | comment | added | DrFish | @Oak, thank you for the IT-crowd reference :) | |
| Aug 25, 2011 at 20:41 | comment | added | Shaun | I used to support ITG questions. Now, I have them actively ignored. My reasoning is basically the content of this post: in the end, most posts are a spam of guesses and grabs at rep. Even the wrong guesses get rep sometimes. Furthermore, they don't add much value from a "someone might also search for those attributes and find the name of the game" perspective. They're essentially noise for anyone but the asker and people who have a tolerance for weeding through tons of noise to find one they might be able to answer. | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 16:47 | comment | added | tzenes | @Matt so, I think my point was that my original statement is not intended as an absolute. I even provided a trivial counter example to back this point. If you want to discuss the absolute nature of ITG you can talk about that with someone else, I only care about the practical reality. Now saying "only detailed ones... should stay open," is kind of like saying "only detailed enough game-rec should stay open." We saw before that a specifier like "only detailed enough" might work in theory, but doesn't work in practice, so I'd shy away from making that a requirement. | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 16:30 | comment | added | Matthew Read |
But I sort of think speaking in ridiculous absolutes is a denial of reality. That doesn't mesh with ITG cannot have answers which are authoritative. That latter statement is a universal negative; my point is that proving it would require authoritative knowledge of all games that exist, which would of course demonstrate the existence of the ability to authoritatively answer these questions. I'm not saying that ITG questions that can be several games are good or should stay open. Only detailed ones that can be properly answered should stay open.
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| Aug 24, 2011 at 16:15 | comment | added | tzenes | @Matt I'm not going to spend the time to find another game which fits the description if it won't be enough to convince you, but that doesn't mean I don't believe one exist. But I sort of think speaking in ridiculous absolutes is a denial of reality. The trivial proof for this would be to copy and paste trademarked graphics or source code. Here is a better test, of the 375 ITG how many hash to one and only one game (in your opinion, since in mine it's none)? | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 16:00 | comment | added | Matthew Read | You'd need to find another game that matches not only every correctly-answered ITG we have, but every ITG question that could possibly be asked. Proving that none of them can be authoritatively answered requires the same authoritative knowledge that you said doesn't exist. As for a particular example, I'd be willing to wager that there is no other game that fits my question. | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 15:51 | comment | added | tzenes | @Matt so you're saying, there is no other game which fits those criteria? If I were to find another game, would that change your stand point? | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 15:37 | comment | added | Matthew Read | I entirely disagree that answers cannot be authoritative. A sufficiently detailed ITG will have only one answer that can possibly fit the description, and someone familiar with the game will recognize it and answer authoritatively. For example: I didn't guess here, I was certain -- and correct. | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 14:15 | comment | added | tzenes | All questions will receive guesses, no question should be penalized for this. Some questions can not have authoritative answers, they should be penalized for it. | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 14:14 | comment | added | tzenes | @Fallen I think you've slightly missed my point. The problem is not that ITG has answers that are not authoritative, the problem is that it cannot have answers which are authoritative. Both you and Oak have eluded to the fact that people guess at other things. As I've mentioned before, this is universal to Q&A, some people will guess. However, the goal of a serious Q&A site is to have an answer that serves all people with that question. This is not always a tractable goal or a realized goal, but it is a goal. ITG cannot have an answer of this nature. | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 14:00 | comment | added | FAE | on the site up to the same standards. We can't afford to create a situation where we're cherry picking question types to hold up to our standards and seemingly favor one over the other. | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 13:59 | comment | added | FAE | I don't think I can agree with closing ITG on the basis of them not being "authoritative." Not a problem, yes, I agree. But on the basis of not being authoritative, what is considered "authoritative"? As @Oak stated, many of the troubleshooting answers are guesses, and honestly, many of strategy answers are just people throwing out their subjective opinions. While I don't disagree that these questions are problematic, if we're going to be closing them, then we have to make sure that we're doing it for the right reasons because we then have to make sure we're holding the other questions | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 13:50 | comment | added | tzenes | @yx_ Any question can have bad answers. Some questions inspire bad answers. Even if the ITG answer describes exactly what parts of the game meet the criteria it does not make it any better than a random guess out of the set of all games which meet those criteria. What's more ITG have the goal of a single game as their answer; by it's very nature this encourages people to select answers which are a single game (and thus supply them). | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 13:47 | comment | added | l I | taking this question as an example, the answer is absolutely correct, but if more information is supplied, such as what my comment added, on top of an actual picture of an in game shuttle and a brief description of the gameplay that answer may come in handy to someone in the future looking for that game. | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 13:46 | comment | added | l I | I don't think the fact its the guessing that is the problem but the quality of the answers. If the answers were well written out describing exactly what parts of the game meets the criteria of the querent with more supporting evidence, I'd say that type of answer is probably pretty good. We just have to encourage better quality answers, that applies to tech support type questions too. You can type in something generic like "its probably your video card" and that answer isn't nearly as useful even if its possibly correct. | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 13:18 | comment | added | tzenes | @Oak, sometimes Troubleshooting answers are guesses (just like sometimes any answer is a guess), but sometimes they're based on the nature of the underlying system. For example, if you have a trouble shooting question which displays the Donkey Kong kill screen, I can authoritatively answer that question. In the case of ITG as long as there is more than one game which fits the OPs criteria, all answers are random guesses from that set of games. | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 8:39 | comment | added | Oak | And I'd say educated guesses that have good chance of being a correct and objective solution are something valuable. | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 8:38 | comment | added | Oak | "ITG answers are Guesses" - you can say the same thing about answers to troubleshooting questions. A lot of them are not from personal experience, they're just educated guesses ("have you tried turning it off and on again"). Sometimes they are wrong, sometimes they are right. | |
| Aug 24, 2011 at 6:17 | history | answered | tzenes | CC BY-SA 3.0 |