We shouldn't have a close reason specific to a single game. What is a better close reason?

Question

As some probably already know, I do not think that it's good to have a close reason that is specific to a single game.

So why is this a problem? It drives some people off the site, I don't have any numbers for it though. Not all of them are going to try to change the site before leaving, I tried, because this really is a problem for me (I can't be the only one, right?) on an otherwise fine site (as far as I can tell, it took me some time to even hear about this). I wish you all the best, bye.

I'm obviously talking about the off topic reason about technical support for modded versions of minecraft. It looks like the community agrees with this as you can see in this question that asks why we would make a close reason that is specific to one game.

I believe that this is a real issue for the same reasons as Unionhawk stated in his answer to the question I linked above:

I think the main reason the discussion centered around Minecraft is because it has been the most active and most problematic category of technical issues questions by several orders of magnitude. But the notion that Minecraft technical support in particular is problematic as a category is... troubling. Singling out one game in particular just because it is popular is extremely problematic.

If we're going to disallow technical issues questions, let's just disallow them, rather than focus on one game that has been producing them. Banning Minecraft technical issues questions in particular is extremely arbitrary at best, and at worst, gives an appearance that we just don't want to deal with Minecraft anymore.

I agree with most of it, except for this part, because this would be a bit too broad and throw out the good with the bad:

If we're going to disallow technical issues questions, let's just disallow them, rather than focus on one game that has been producing them.

The problem seems to basically be that there is no workable definition for what makes a game "like minecraft", other than "it's minecraft". So that's what this question is about. What definition other than "minecraft" would be narrow enough to only affect games that would suffer from the same problems as minecraft, while not being specific to a single game?

An ideal definition would work for every game, but it would only make questions off topic that are bad by the same metric that technical support questions for modded minecraft would be bad (it also wouldn't nessessarily make all questions about technical support for modded minecraft off topic, only the bad ones, which seems to basically be all of them).

It can be narrow enough to only affect minecraft, but it shouldn't be specific to a single game. If a similar game gets released that would result in the same kind of bad questions, then the definition should work for that game, too.

I was a bit surprised that I couldn't find any question that already asks about this, I've been told that there has been a lot of discussion and that seems to be true, but I couldn't find a single question that actually tries to solve this.

Here are some quotes that can serve as inspiration, or to see why they don't work.

I hope that they help with finding a workable definition. Some may be taken a little out of context, but I don't think that I've created any strawman (please tell me in the comments if you think that I misrepresented someone). They didn't nessessarily try to make a workable definition.

highly moddable games _{my original answer}

The problem with this definition is that it would affect other games where tech support questions about modded versions aren't bad, like Oblivion, Skyrim, or Fallout. (loosely quoted)

The common denominators seem to be crash reports and unclear error codes (NullPointerException, for example. That could mean a lot of things). _{Original answer by Unionhawk}

I couldn't find any comments about this, though it would probably affect games where the questions aren't as bad.

What kind of Tech Support questions are we bad at, regardless of the specific game in question?

• Anything involving a crash that doesn't recur in a clearly defined, reproducible manner.
• Anything involving a verbose crash-log that requires significant effort and decoding in order to even have a chance at retrieving potentially useful information. _{Original answer by LessPop_MoreFizz}

I couldn't find any comments about this.

unanswerable crash questions _{Original answer by fredley}

UNanswerable is a terrible metric

[...] user created mods [...] with a bunch of non-standard pieces of code written by completely unrelated individuals with basically no documentation. _{Original comment by two bugs}

I couldn't find any comments about this.

Questions seeking Technical Support requiring In-Depth Troubleshooting are off topic. This includes questions involving technical support for highly modded games. The Q&A format is not an appropriate format for these questions. Your best option is probably to contact the the developer of your game or any mods you might be using, as appropriate. _{Original answer by MrLemon}

There's a good amount of subjectivity in this suggesting. When we're creating close reasons, it's generally a good idea to pull as much subjectivity out of it as possible.

Answer 1

The close reason is very specifically: Technical Support of Modded Minecraft. Here's the definition from the Help Center:

Troubleshooting and diagnosis of modded Minecraft, including crashes, startup errors or other abnormal behaviour caused by modding

It might seem pedantic to point this out, but it leads in to my later point - this is a specific rule to a specific problem we faced as a community.

But why is it a rule for a specific game?

Because it is the only game that has faced the particular issue of having a majority unanswerable set of tech support questions. But don't be fooled into thinking that Minecraft is a special case: we have other game and tag-specific rules too!:

• We banned 'How do I attack this base' questions from Clash of Clans

• We considered banning all Pokemon Go Tech support but didn't, because the questions easy to answer (and mostly duplicates).

  • We did briefly stop supporting users who tried to play the game outside of a supported region but that was short-lived due to Pokemon Go eventually being released everywhere.

• We discussed banning Vanilla Minecraft tech support a couple of times too, like during the discussion about banning Modded Minecraft Tech Support. Again, we didn't, because supporting vanilla Minecraft is an order of magnitude simpler, to the point where the majority of vanilla Minecraft issues were captured in a single question.

• Even Game Identification, a single-tag topic area, has had similar scope discussions play out. We went from all questions being allowed, to all of them banned, to "only allowing cases where the OP provides some evidence".
  _{I have to fit this here because it doesn't make sense anywhere else but: this single-tag topic area gets its own close reason, but Minecraft with 36 tags doesn't deserve one? Think about it.}

But what about the close reason?

If we broaden the close reason to encompass all games, then we are broadening the policy to encompass all games, and I for one am not on board for that particular slippery slope. Tech support is on-topic. Mods and Modding are on-topic. To ban other technical support of mods because Modded Minecraft causes us issues would be like banning dogs from the park because an Elephant stomped through it.

The point is that - much like our site's guiding principles - our rules are based on actual problems we face as a community. Certain games have topic areas that are just simply problematic for us, and there's no good way in which to broaden that policy to fit all games. Especially not just to make a close reason template not target an individual game.

Answer 2

I don't really see a problem here. As guidelines, those close reasons demarcate the limits of what this community can be asked about. Those guidelines shift and evolve, along with this community's territory.

If a certain problematic situation, which is exceptionally hard to solve, is found to generally be tied to a specific game (or console, or genre, for that matter), it shouldn't be a problem to mention that specific title (or console, or genre) among the closing reasons, since it explicitly and without ambiguity indicates what is considered off-topic.

On the other hand, I can appreciate Unionhawk's reaction to this, and think I would have agreed with them when the problem initially showed up: the shifting and evolving I mentioned should be dealt with fundamentally, by design, not superficially, and especially not retroactively.

But as the damage has already been done, I don't see how generalizing a very particular problematic case can benefit the community, as generalization will start covering terrain we don't have problems with. This seems to be in alignment with Robotnik's answer.

If we consider the alternative situation, in which the problem with Technical Support for Modded Minecraft (TSMM) was never brought up, we could have had an incredible amount of unanswered questions, most OP's of which were long gone, but with the general consensus of what is considered germane on Arqade intact. I wonder if that situation is preferable.

---

Alternatively, is there - in theory - a way to solve TSMM questions, if enough information is provided? What if users were asked to provide logs, crash files, DirectX dialogues, the works?
Or does the biggest problem lie with Java, and its general errors?
(Or should this be posted as a new Q&A thread?)

Answer 3

Agreed. I've held this view since 2015. We can't just moderate reactively. We should have identified the specific issues we had with this category of questions back then, but instead we chose to take a shortcut. I advocated against this shortcut back then, and I continue to do so today, we should never single out specific games when considering topicality. What we did back then is like if SO decided that JavaScript "why is this code not working" questions, in particular, were off topic just because there were a lot of them. Absurd.

That being said, in order to broaden the close reason, we will need to have a serious discussion on broadening the policy. I for one believe that this is a discussion worth having, and has always been worth having. We should never limit our policy imaginations to issues we currently face. We must, in all things, consider what our specific issues with a class of questions are, and CONSIDER WHETHER OR NOT OUR DECISIONS MAY ALIENATE A PORTION OF OUR COMMUNITY.

ahem

To that end. I propose the following:

Requests for technical support of modded games are off-topic, including crashes, errors or other abnormal behavior caused by modding. See Where can I ask troubleshooting questions about modded games? for other places to go, or clarify your question if the issue persists without any installed mods.

Is this a contrarian take? Absolutely. But I'm tired of this issue being dismissed as "well, we're not currently having other issues, so there's no problem with having close reasons specific to specific users' areas of expertise." There is, in fact, a big problem with this actually.

At the end of the day, this decision has always been shortsighted. The real question is, do we want to continue to be shortsighted, which may work well enough I guess, or do we want to do an analysis of why, specifically, these questions are bad. I have a feeling that I know the answer. Disappointing.