2

I asked, despite my best judgement, a poorly received question that got intensely downvoted and closed as too broad by five people, two of which are high-profile users.

I thought "name this mechanic/design"-style questions were on-topic because of and a couple of questions that did just that. Also, FAQ/Tour saying that questions about "Game mechanics and terminology" are on-topic.

However, if you read the comments to my question, you'll see seasoned answerers despise these questions and think they are off-topic.

Therefore, I suggest we should modify FAQ/Tour to:

  • list questions about explaining a named mechanic and/or design as on-topic,
  • list questions about identifying an unnamed mechanic and/or design as off-topic.
7
  • Is the tag's description not good enough?
    – Wrigglenite
    Commented May 21, 2017 at 7:49
  • 1
    related: gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11467/…
    – Dragonrage Mod
    Commented May 21, 2017 at 8:03
  • 1
    @DanmakuGrazer In theory, yes. But most tag descriptions on most SE sites are pretty broad and questions like that are acceptable on RPG.SE's terminology tag - so this is not explicit enough. Perhaps we should add something along the lines of DO NOT use it to ask questions about "does this thing have a name?", only worded better.
    – Dragomok
    Commented May 21, 2017 at 10:11
  • 3
    Possible duplicate of Do we want to change our policy on "Is There a Term for X?" questions? (a more recent community consensus on the same topic)
    – galacticninja
    Commented Aug 18, 2021 at 6:25
  • Do we always close questions on topics that have been reviewed and revised again later on?
    – Joachim
    Commented Aug 18, 2021 at 8:43
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    @joachim I think in this case we should, since if someone came across this post, the linked duplicate will guide them.
    – Timmy Jim Mod
    Commented Aug 21, 2021 at 2:44
  • @Joachim We should, to avoid confusing users on our current policy.
    – galacticninja
    Commented Aug 28, 2021 at 2:47

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

I think the tag is just fine as it is. The excerpt mentions that the tag should be used

For questions that ask what a gaming-specific term means.

Nothing about it mentions labelling a gaming-specific thing with a name. Furthermore, the tag's full info mentions that

It is not appropriate for repository style questions that seek to span the terminology graph.

3
  • I see your point in saying "if it doesn't say it's allowed, it's not"; I just believe it would help to be more explicit, especially since the linked questions shows it's a recurring problem.
    – Dragomok
    Commented May 21, 2017 at 10:25
  • Also, a tiny nit-pick: the quoted part in tag's full info wouldn't have helped in my case, since it asked for a specific, easily-identifiable thing that is a recurrent hallmark of virtually all titles in a single genre.
    – Dragomok
    Commented May 21, 2017 at 10:26
  • Judging by lack of any other responses, this is a majority opinion, so I'll mark this answer as accepted.
    – Dragomok
    Commented Jun 15, 2017 at 5:21

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