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With the Pokémon hype, we're seeing a lot of new users finding their way to our Q&A site. Unfortunately, this means a lot of low level questions:

  • Duplications
  • Error related questions (i.e. servers are having a very hard time keeping up, a lot of "problems" are resolved by exercising some patience"

This is starting to make us look like the support platform of Niantic. Over on SO, I know it's not always appreciated when another company refers to SO for support.

But, to my surprise I also found some questions by people who genuinely seem to confuse this community with Niantic itself:

In light of the massive initial surge in Pokémon GO players, I expect the above effect to increase even further once the game'll be launched officially in other countries. My question therefore is: do we need to make an "official" announcement post to address this? A post to help the new users that arrive specifically for Pokémon GO?

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    We've also been assumed Mojang support before. And so many others probably. Most of the people who make said assumption don't look anyway. They just assume. This might be an overgeneralisation, but so be it.
    – Arperum
    Jul 13, 2016 at 11:51
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    The kind of users who post the low quality questions aren't the kind of people who would read an announcement post.
    – Pyritie
    Jul 14, 2016 at 21:45

3 Answers 3

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I don't think we should set a precedent of warning users we are not an official support site for Pokemon GO.

The website doesn't make any such claim. The site isn't filled with Pokemon/Nintendo ads or any other branding conflicts that may cause confusion.

I'm not saying people do not come into the site thinking it is a support site for Pokemon, Clash of Clans or Minecraft... or some other popular game. However, it is a small minority from what I can see, and for those that come to this judgement probably have bigger problems to overcome (this goes in hand with the grammar and spelling issues throughout their questions).

A warning is most likely going to annoy the majority of literate members over the low quality group mentioned.

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I think most of the questions are fine and covered by existing close reasons and other moderation tools like protection for popular questions. There is one thing I'd like to enforce for in particular though - technical support questions from outside supported regions should be closed. The same reasons that apply to illegal/unreleased content does apply here -

  • They are likely playing a copy of the game that's not obtained legally
  • Players that do so are liable to getting banned / infecting their phone with malware
  • It's very difficult to tell if the issue arise from the fact that they are playing in an unsupported region or if it is an actual bug with the game

Examples of this type of questions that are as of writing unclosed

Now I'm not suggesting that we check that every new technical support question is asked by someone playing in a supported region - we should assume good faith. But if the OP admit themselves that they aren't playing in a supported region, I don't think there's any point in this site supporting them when Ninatic doesn't.

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  • Or alternatively, just point all these unsupported region questions to a decent QA. That would help with people adding new questions, because with a little luck that question pops up in a prior search or during the creation of the question.
    – user101016
    Jul 13, 2016 at 14:18
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    Can you add the specific TOS clause that is being broken by playing the game in an unsupported region? I agree with the answer I've just heard a few people saying it breaks the TOS but I can't find it specifically stated in the TOS. (Sure, distributing the apk/app is violating TOS and Copyright, but that's nothing to do with playing the game).
    – Robotnik Mod
    Jul 14, 2016 at 3:09
  • @Robotnik Speculative, but since Ninatic has banned people for it I think it's not too far a stretch. I'll make the wording less strong
    – Private Pansy
    Jul 14, 2016 at 6:37
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    @PrivatePansy I'm still not convinced that's why they were banned, considering the vast number of people here who didn't get banned for using the APK. I'm willing to bet they were actually banned for GPS spoofing.
    – Comic Sans Seraphim
    Jul 14, 2016 at 11:47
  • FYI - this game is still being rolled out to more regions. I notice it was made available to the UK today. Should this impact any decision to enforce a vote to close policy as specified?
    – user101016
    Jul 14, 2016 at 15:51
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    Why isn't this answer the accepted one? This answer explains way more, and is way better.
    – Surprisejedi
    Jul 20, 2016 at 16:04
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If you look at the tag: , there are 557 questions already.
Most of them are

  • Duplicates
  • Opinion based
  • Or even promote piracy! (which is against the site's rules as stated in the tour page).

There has to be a check on the new questions. One must use the power to down-vote a question with responsibility.

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  • Ok, this is getting awkward, can you explain what exactly is a gamer? I hope (s)he's not the one who loses one limb or life while trying to cross the road!
    – ABcDexter
    Jul 17, 2016 at 5:17
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    It is literally defined as somebody who plays a game. It has nothing to do with that persons capacity to play the game, or infact, exhibit any form of intelligence whatsoever. As far as checking new questions, they have been checked. That is why they have been closed. Users have already checked them, and voted accordingly.
    – user106385
    Jul 17, 2016 at 5:22
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    You are right about the new questions.
    – ABcDexter
    Jul 17, 2016 at 5:31
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    Duplication isn't bad, as duplicates act as 'signposts' to the canonical question. This is why we don't delete duplicates. Also, of 579 questions, 151 are marked as duplicate, or ~26%. Is this high? Probably a little. Does it matter much? Not really.
    – Robotnik Mod
    Jul 17, 2016 at 12:13
  • Yes, precisely. I spent most of the day while looking at the questions ( I can't play as i have android 4.3 and game has not released in India, yet). Most of the questions after googling are found on the site itself.
    – ABcDexter
    Jul 17, 2016 at 12:17

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