[game-recommendations] and single, correct answers

Question

On my question asking about game recommendations, the user random asked how such a question can have a single, correct answer.

It's a very good question, in my opinion, so I bring it here - especially since it is relevant to all questions tagged [game-recommendations], which is already one of the more popular tags.

My opinion is that random is correct, yet I believe that behavior should be allowed:

• The stack exchange engine lends itself well to these kinds of questions.
• One of the reasons I'm excited about this site is the ability to give and receive game recommendations - that was actually my "comment" field when I committed to the beta.
• According to the popularity of this tag, I am far from being alone in this opinion.

But I can definitely understand random's stance, so I'd like to reach some community policy.

Answer 1

After some thought and discussion with other users on chat, my opinion is that in general, these sort of questions should be allowed, as long as

1. They are not too broad
2. They are marked as community wiki.

Not too broad - because just a list of all RTSs doesn't add anything. Many other sites catalog games according to genres. But a list of all RTSs that involve space-pirates and mutant t-rexes - that's something else, and finding these games is something the gaming community excels at. I think that if a question has hundreds of potential answers it should be considered too broad and closed, but if the scope is smaller it should be OK.

Community wiki - because

1. These are the sort of questions that are likely to evolve over time.
2. Making them CW will prevent them from being too common, no rep-farming.
3. It has been traditional for any "list of X" questions to be CW if they are deemed appropriate to the site.
4. And finally, it will help offset the fact that the criteria above - "too broad" - is subjective in the first place.

Answer 2

The private beta period is when we should sort out the tone of what kinds of questions the site wants to curate.

When it goes public beta and the new users see a page full of recommendation type questions, they're going to think it's the sort of material this site and engine wants to keep around.

Do we want to sit around the campfire singing kumbaya?
Or do we want to get a direct answer to a game related problem we're having?

Doesn't take skills or expert knowledge to throw an opinion out there.

Answer 3

My personal opinion is (after changing, so this is my current view) that they can get very subjective at times. "What is a good RTS?", "What's a good TBS?", "What's a good iPhone game for kids?", etc could have hundreds of answers, and loads of disagreement.

But on the other hand, a question like this:

"What is a open-source turn-based RPG with multiplayer support?" is far more specific, and far more likely to have a single answer.

Answer 4

I think there is a confusion between:

1. "single, correct answer" and
2. "accepted answer" <- the actual term used in the software

There are barely any questions that have the former. I think the point is not find the single, ultimate truth for a question but to allow discussion until the asking member can say: "Ok, this helped me. This is what I wanted to know."

It is unreasonable to acknowledge that the information a person is seeking may be contributed over various posts instead of one big answer?

Answer 5

The way I see [game-recommendations] is similar to searching for alternative coding libraries.

for Example, consider if this question would be allowed on stackoverflow:
Is there an alternative for PDFlib in PHP.

Answer 6

I also found the chat a useful way to get out some of my ideas on this topic and here is what I came up with:

Consider EpicAdvice (the WoW SE 1.0 Community). Now ideally the people this community wants to attract are the members of websites like Elitist Jerks. People who REALLY know WoW to the point where they can "calculate the theoretical maximum damage a DPS dagger rogue can do while spec'd into subtlety." They want these people because they have the specialized "tribal" knowledge that will answer the really esoteric questions.

Now consider the kinds of questions these Elitist Jerks will be attracted by. They are not the "What are good quests like X" questions. A question like that is not interesting to them because there are too many answers to it and they are mostly subjective.

The reason Epic Advice has not taken off but Elitist Jerks has is not because people can get answers at Elitist Jerks, but because they can get good questions (EJ has a fairly draconian moderating policy). "What are games like Heroes of Might and Magic?" is not such a question.

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Edit: I think the major difference between this and a question on SO like "What's a Javascript option that is similar to Tomcat?" is that game recommendations are something everyone has an opinion on, where this sample question is something only someone who knows a lot about javascript and servers is likely to answer.

Answer 7

I think the 'single correct answer' problem is sorta solved if these questions are community wiki.