All of the original 266 (we got 3 in between the start of this question and the start of the deletion, go figure) game recommendation questions have been deleted. The remaining ones are currently spared on account of not having had 2 days pass yet, as per normal deletion protocol. While problematic to our system, game recommendations aren't the kind of bottom-barrel plague scum that demands immediate deletion.
The game-rec tag is also probably going to be phased out. Remember that one of the reasons we use "*-rec" as a syntax is that it is obscure and less likely to be used. Now that we don't want the question type to come at all, the tag is meaningless as it categorizes an off-topic subject matter. We don't tag shopping-recommendations, and those are equally off-topic.
As such, please do not tag future game-rec questions as "game-rec". Please just vote to close them and direct them to the policy in our updated FAQ. The "good" questions that still have the tag will probably be swapped for some different tag.
I have always wanted to deleted them, ever since I went on the spree that closed every one of them after our policy passed. I've withheld from doing so in order to prevent a schism between the mods, mostly - it's easier to discuss matters on neutral and comfortable grounds if the situation is "Nothing has been done", compared to "I've deleted all of these, muhuhaha!". To that end, let's open fire with our cannons, shall we?
There are a number of reasons I don't believe that they should stick around.
"Grandfathering" things like Stack Overflow does mostly keeps broken windows, and it doesn't apply to us anyway. Unlike Stack Overflow's stuff, game recommendations have been contested as a subject since the second week of beta. We barely allowed them thanks to the constant infighting of closing-reopening, so we cannot make the same claims of "This is being kept for historical purposes of a time when they were originally allowed", because they could barely be considered such.
Furthering the above, nobody likes grandfathered material because it's unfair and arbitrary. What it doesn't open up for people trying to follow the trend, it just invites more and more argumentation about how things used to be.
Even closed, they still skew votes. The top voted questions on a site give an image of what the site is about, and while I have lots of pride for our very top questions being questions, it still fills me with disappointment that game-recs fill the #5 and #15 slots in our top questions. They used to be #3 and #5, as well, some months ago.
They may give the site a negative image. 9% of our site falls under closed:1, and game-rec accounts for a significant portion of it (as 4% of our site's content). There has been some voiced concern (not from the higher ups, but just on occasions such here) that our apparent close rate is high. Removing the game recs, and calculating from the adjusted final totals, brings us down to a more palatable 5%. And it also removes the presence of an entire tag devoted to closed questions.
If a closed question isn't sticking around for google juice (namely for duplicates), it's generally assumed that it's viable for people to vote-to-reopen. As has been argued in various Meta discussions, game recommendations cannot be repaired without making a completely different question - they always fall under either itemized lists or shopping recommendations, which are both off-topic.
We don't need to illustrate examples of off-topic questions by keeping them around. This firstly requires that they have to see the example. And this is traditionally done by one of the community linking to it. Why link to a bad question when you should be able to link to our charter (AKA our FAQ) that should clearly state that they aren't allowed? There's nothing personal about the FAQ, and we don't need to walk all incoming users through the justifications of the rule which took months of infighting to establish. That history is really the only advantage that showing them the question, rather than the rule, would accomplish, and I am not sure it should even be considered an advantage in that respect.
We have since agreed, in placing the no-rec policy, that the value of these questions is not a value that Gaming Stack Exchange is intending to preserve. Harsh as it sounds, we have no obligation or benefit to keeping them alive for the reference of others. We implicate value to these questions if we retain them for reference (as, after all, that's what our primary trade is). This contradicts our declaration of them as off-topic.
To that point, if people are permalinking to us for our closed game recs, that means we're being used as a resource for game recs. Any permalinks that we break in this process means less people coming here explicitly under the impression of getting game recommendations. It's data that we do not want to carry, nor imply that we want to carry.
Concluding all of that, I'm pretty much still inclined towards their deletion.
