What should we do with two similar styles of "history" question?

Question

We currently have two very similar types of questions that are handled very differently according to past consensus and precedent: Questions asking about the origin of a particular feature, differing only in their wording.

It's best to illustrate this with an example:

What was the first game to use WASD for movement?

This, according to our ITG-related and multi-repurposed close reason, is off topic, due to the clause that says, 'Questions asking for help identifying a game, whether based on a description, or feature list, or any other set of criteria (i.e. "What was the first game to…") are off-topic.' (emphasis mine)

However, if you were to reword this question to:

What is the origin of the WASD key scheme?

Then, suddenly, the precedent is that this question is on topic. These questions are asking the exact same thing. The exact same information is required to answer both of these questions. I propose that they are the same question, and should be handled the same way as each other. I don't actually have much of a preference for which way they're handled, so long as we're consistent.

So, do you think that both of these questions should be off topic, or do you think that both of these questions should be on topic, or do you want to make the case that these questions are somehow different? Let's decide it in this meta.

Answer 1

These questions have value. They're really interesting, and can provide insight into the history of a hobby that a lot of us really love. Upon reflection, I don't think that closing all of them is really the best service to the community.

But, consider the case where both questions exist:

What was the first game to use WASD for movement?

and

What is the origin of the WASD key scheme?

If the latter exists, the former is redundant. It should probably be closed as a duplicate.

If someone asks the former by itself, most people who know the answer would probably know a lot more contextual information than simply providing the name of a game, and that contextual information is interesting.

I propose that "first game" questions be reworded to "origin" questions, if possible, and left open. If the OP is stubborn and refuses to edit or rolls back, then we can just close as usual and move on to the next interesting question. So I guess, despite being the OP of this question, I'm actually in favor of some kind of distinguishing between the two types of questions.

Answer 2

This is a sticky issue of interpreting authorial intent. As asked, I do see a distinction in the questions, if they are interpreted as narrowly as possible. To change the example, consider the question:

What was the first game to feature Mega Man?

This has one correct objective answer: Mega Man (1987, NES). To expound on it drifts outside what the question actually asked. The author may have intended to ask more, but they didn't. Now to ask:

What is the origin of Mega Man?

Answering simply "Mega Man" for the NES doesn't actually answer the question at all. This example holds for game mechanics, characters, and tropes that are specific to video games; they each have a specific first appearance, which can be given in one line, but the actual history of how they came to be is much more complex.

If we're going to have history at all, I don't see how one can be accepted and the other is off topic. Yes, questions that ask "What was the first game to x" will always be low quality, that's a given. They aren't open ended, they ask for one specific fact. Any answers will be of similar quality. But they are legitimate history questions. If we want to have a rule that says "gaming history questions are allowed unless they're Jeopardy questions," we have to deal with the reality that changing the phrasing will make an off topic question on topic.

So what do we do? Get rid of history questions. Because if we want to keep them, we're more or less stuck with our "what was the first" questions. I think they stink by default, but I don't see a clear cut case to ban them while keeping broader, higher quality questions on gaming history.

So to repeat StrixVaria's quote of FAQ in this meta:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.

Answer 3

I feel consideration toward how the community of users perceive the question asked is important.

If the community finds it of particular interest to up-vote the question then based on the mechanic and contextual point of an up-vote in context, it should fly. Afterall, a down-vote indicates low quality or value while and while it is sometimes used to denote disinterest or disapproval on personal level by some users, up-voting is used in similar fashion. If we expel questions that are down-voted and flagged through semantic clauses to maintain a degree of standard in objective appeal, fairness lends itself toward the same with an up-vote, right?

Whether someone asks "which was first" or "what is the origin of" the prepending argument is semantic only. If we look at the core question and see that it's a question to learn the history of as to seek a narrow scope on a broad topic it should be fine. If we see that it's simply trying seek a broad answer to a narrow-scoped question then it should fall or be edited to become the former, especially if we allow a tag for "history-hardware" and "history-software."

This could spur a lot of copypasta from Wikipedia or other sites that have Wikipedia copypasta, but questions such as "Was the Atari 2600 the first home console to have a screen saver?" (which I did just answer - because 8 up-votes gave it a sense of being a worthy question, good for the site) are not things you'll just go to Wikipedia and get a definitive or absolute answer without heavy additional research or experiential knowledge to answer the specific question at what seems to be the standard.