This policy has been withdrawn from the running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of the policy Allow game-rec as Community Wiki if they are specific enough to only have a few answers, it is now withdrawn as an option.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.
