Final game-rec showdown preparation

Question

TL;DR - the parts below in bold convey the key message of this post.

This question is now LIVE: What should be done with questions asking for game recommendations?

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I guess we all want to have the game-rec issue resolved one way or the other. My idea is to create a meta-question in which several options for what happens to game-rec questions will be posted and each one will upvote the options they like. This is a direct application of the proposal on how to handle site policies by sjohnston.

It will look something like:

Question: what should be done with a game-rec question posted to the site?

Answer 1: it should be closed as off-topic

Answer 2: it should be closed as off-topic if "too broad", otherwise permitted

Answer 3: it should remain open

Answer 4: it should remain open but CW-ed by mods

etc. (possibly many additional options)

My idea is to, after a week or a month or something, count only upvotes on each proposed answer, and then to enforce the policy dictated by the highest-voted answer. That means multiple upvotes are permitted but downvotes will be ignored.

• Why ignore downvotes? Because that's how real polls work, and we can just assume many will anyway downvote anything they do not upvote.
• Why allow multiple upvotes? Because (1) we can't prevent it and (2) it will allow people that will be okay with more than one option the ability to express that.

The question here is whether this form of final showdown is agreeable to people - in other words, the question here is will you be willing to accept the policy dictated the chosen answer even if you disagree with it. Please upvote this question if you will be willing to accept it, and downvote if you will not.

Personally I say I would be willing to accept whatever policy is selected, even though I am an ardent supporter of game-rec questions and these types of questions were the primary reason for me joining the site and committing in the beta phase.

This is not a place to discuss game-recs themselves; please avoid doing so. This is a place to discuss the applicability of this proposal-for-policy-decision.

Answer 1

Also, in the original policy-decision-proposal post by sjohnston, Grace Note has made an important comment:

What happens when "site policy" is questioned? Do we open up the whole system once again and have another vote? How do we define the "solidity" of a policy? – Grace Note♦

I don't oppose the concept of appealing a site policy, but I really feel that in order to promote stability we should enforce the selected policy for a long period of time before we allow any appeals. I propose one year. I realize a year is a long time - this site has only been up for 4 months - but stability and consistency are important.

I think that we should all agree that whatever decision is reached, unless some new external situation arises (e.g. the game-rec area51 proposal enters public beta), we would prevent any appeal of that policy for one year. Please let me know by votes and comments if that's acceptable.

Answer 2

It should be closed as off-topic, but if the majority of the community would deem it otherwise I wouldn't oppose it.

Personally, I would just ignore the questions and if the many of the high rep users would follow this example, then what have we accomplished? The questions will not be closed, but they will not get the same high quality attention as the other questions.

Anyway Oak, I appreciate that you're finally trying to settle this discussion, but with a divided community I'm not sure how it will work out. I'm guessing our benevolent dictator will come along and settle this like he did with that other recommendation mess...

Answer 3

I also think this issue should be settled soon. The current state is IMHO the worst of both worlds, there is no clear policy for those questions. I would favor a clear yes or no to game recommendations, but I can live with both solutions.

I consider the proposed way a good solution to decide policy issues. I would argue that the time for voting should be longer than a week, maybe two weeks to a month. It would be nice to somehow get some visibility for those important meta voting-questions, as I assume the people who regularly visit meta are a pretty small bunch. But everyone who is interested in the way this site is run should be visiting meta anyways, so this is not a critical point.

There should also be a short period before the voting (maybe in a seperate question) in which the community can suggest the possible answers. If additional answers are added later, this may bias the voting.