defining "concrete reference" in function of ITG questions [closed]

Question

So we have already restricted questions tagged with identify-this-game to "only allowed with concrete reference to the game", which in the tag wiki is defined as "a screenshot, video, etc".

My question is: what belongs to the etc? There are tons of things that aren't a screenshot, a video or a sound fragment but can still be used to identify a game without returning to recollection. Off the top of my head:

1. Concept art;
2. A texture extracted from the game;
3. A sprite or other part of the game that's shown separately;
4. A cosplay;
5. A real-life sculpture or recreation of a character, unit or object in a game;
6. A quote; (please ignore the rest, just go by the quote here)
7. A really distinct name;
8. A concrete reference to a different entertainment product that is parodying or satirizing the game the person is looking for. (many of the videos on this channel).

You could probably make a claim or counterclaim to any of these being a reasonable reference to identify a game from, which is why I want to establish rules surrounding this (and possibly add them to the expanded tag wiki) in advance.

I realize that often, the community response to attempts at defining topicality is "let's wait for the situation to appear before trying to determine rules". However, I feel it's important to establish rules like this in advance. That way, we can immediately point to them and say "sorry, this is not allowed" instead of giving the asker hope that it's allowed only to smack it down a few hours later after we debated them.

Answer 1

A concrete artifact is exactly that; something we can point to and go, "What is that?"

That includes something like cosplay, promotional material, advertising, music (even remixes), and, especially, video.

What it does not include is anything where it comes from memory, or if the concrete artifact is not detailed enough for us to be able to help you. We've had users whistle a tune. That's great. But it's still their recollection of what the music was, so that doesn't count. We've had screenshots of black and blue bars, and while that's technically an artifact, it wasn't nearly enough to identify anything at all from it.

So, for your list,

1. Yes
2. As long as it's not zoomed in to the point of uselessness, yes.
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. No
7. No
8. Very no.

Let me elaborate the last one; the base reasoning is that it might be a parody, but we have no definitive proof of what, exactly, they might be parodying. We can certainly guess, and make arguments as to which we think it might be, but at the end of the day, it's still a guessing game.

Our exception is to remove the guessing. Give us something we can see or hear, and it goes from guessing what the asker is asking about, to identifying the object they have provided. It's less, "guess this game I vaguely remember", and more, "What is this specific thing called?"