We have some topics on Arqade that we do consider as off-topic. I will here talk about the four ones you can flag a question for:
- Questions about unreleased or illegal content.
- Questions about Game Design and Development.
- Question asking for help identifying a game.
- Questions that ask for recommendations.
Now I noticed that for the second topic, the description is giving to the author some advice so he can go ask his question elsewhere:
You might want to ask over at GameDev.SE, but be sure to read their FAQ
(By the way there is a point missing at the end of this sentence, I think it would be nice to add one.)
I won't talk about the first topic there because we surely do not want to help people on illegal stuff. Now for the identification or the recommendations of games, there is also some links which are here to help the author to maybe find the answer he was looking for. But I think it would be nice to actually give for each one of those topics an alternative website where those people could find the answer they are looking for. Maybe it was intentional to not give an alternative site which is not part of the Stack Exchange websites, in that case I was just not aware of it. I am also aware that you can't do that for everything (for instance the recommendation of servers), but I do think that it is possible for everything related to identifying and recommending games.
When asking this question, I was especially thinking it could be nice to give to the authors the opportunity to go ask their questions on the AskGames Reddit, which is exactly the purpose of this Reddit: looking for games.
I do think that just adding this kind of website recommendations could be beneficial for everyone. For the authors, and especially the new ones, they get another way to get the answer they are looking for, and it probably feels less rude for them than just getting an "off-topic" tag on their first question. For Arqade and its users, it actually shows that we are still willing to help somehow and that we are nice. And I do think that it is an important point.
What do you think about it?