Should we update our /help/on-topic page?

Question

It was recently noted by a few users that our on-topic page lacks any indication that we don't offer technical support for modded Minecraft. While the on-topic certainly doesn't need to cover everything, we close a lot of Minecraft questions due to this rule. So updating our /help/on-topic to include this makes sense to me.

However, before I go ahead and do that, I figure we might as well just review the page as a whole:

Arqade is for passionate videogamers from all platforms, including consoles, computers, handhelds, and mobile devices. If your question generally covers things such as …

• Gameplay strategies and tactics
• Puzzle solving or obstacle clearing
• Game mechanics and terminology
• Plot and characters in games
• Game-specific hardware and utilities

…then you are in the right place to ask your question!

Please note, however, that site policies prohibit questions of the following types:

• Game and Mod Development (try the Game Development Stack Exchange instead)
• Speculative questions about developer intent, with respect to both mechanics and narrative
• Requests for game identification based on personal recollection alone. See What are the requirements for asking a game identification question?
• Catalogues (listing games that fit specific criteria or are like an existing game)
• Shopping advice and recommendations
• Speculation of the future of the industry and of upcoming releases
• Piracy, and support with pirated games.

For more help, see "What types of questions should I avoid asking?"

Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to ask and answer your own question.

If your question is not specifically on-topic for Arqade, it may be on topic for another Stack Exchange site. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may commit to or propose a new site at Area 51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created.

What changes should we make to this page, if any?

Answer 1

Just so we can vote on this proposal, I'm making this post in favour of listing modded Minecraft tech support as off-topic in the on-topic page.

Answer 2

Building off Mad Scientist's comment, a couple of the items under the prohibit section could be combined. As it stands, it's very wordy and a few of the items are similar. The suggested wording below can be tweaked as seen fit

Speculation

• Speculative questions about developer intent, with respect to both mechanics and narrative
• Speculation of the future of the industry and of upcoming releases

These two could be combined into:

• Speculations on future of the industry, upcoming (but unreleased) games or content, and developer intent on mechanics and narrative

Recommendations

• Catalogues (listing games that fit specific criteria or are like an existing game)
• Shopping advice and recommendations

These two could be combined into:

• Recommendations for software, hardware, games, or genres

Answer 3

Suggested wording for modded Minecraft:

Please check the tag wiki for the game about which you are asking before posting. For example, modded minecraft questions are off-topic.

This generalizes the advice slightly while still covering the specific situation of modded Minecraft.

Answer 4

While at the time I said that the tag's description was enough, now seems like a good time to revisit this suggestion: Add prohibition of "name this mechanic/design"-style questions to the tour

I am, of course, assuming that there is a consensus on treating these questions as too broad and/or primarily opinion based. If there isn't, then the tag's info page should be changed, but that's a discussion for another time.

Answer 5

I voted to close so many questions as off-topic as "it's tech support for modded Minecraft" that my phone now autocompletes it after "it's". But I only did that because it was a rule. If we now discuss the reasoning for it, I want to actually argue against it:

99% of the questions that are closed this way are covered by the "too broad" close reason anyway. People just install a hundred mods without any consideration, the game crashes and they dump the log and list of mods (if we're lucky) or just the fact that it crashed into the question box. Since the reason for the crash can be any of the mods or any combination of mods, it is actually way too broad for a question here. We could either close this as "too broad" or make an FAQ tutorial on how to debug situations like these (remove some mods, try again, if it works remove everything except the last removed one, then try some settings and so on) and close those questions as duplicate, like we already do for "is there a list of error codes for Minecraft". That would be more helpful for the askers.

So, what about the remaining 1%? These are basically already fine, but closed anyway because of the rule. For example someone only installed Optifine and the game crashed. This can be looked at pretty easily: See if you can reproduce it, if yes, can you find a solution to it, if not, ask for more information, if there's no solution, tell them to report it as an Optifine bug.

TLDR: Remove that close reason completely, close most of these questions as "too broad" instead.