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A recent question asked for some relatively localized information subject to change and received 3 close votes. I rephrased it to ask for external sources/links to the information which would presumably remain more up-to-date, but it still garnered two more close-votes. The question deals with pricing, but after ceding the maintenance of the information to an external site, the well-rehearsed "pricing" = "too localized" issue seems moot.

Are these sorts questions that want external sources to changing information off-topic? It seems like the site could serve as a fairly effective broker of turning some naturally phrased question into cold, hard URLs.

There's the trite "links could die", but a good answer should use some sort of official link that should be far less susceptible to that than the more problematic forum or blog post.

Perhaps this is clouding the issue and the original question was fine; World of Warcraft and EVE: Online have not, to my knowledge, changed their pricing at all in their entire several-year run. An answer those sorts of questions has been far less "localized" than their actual content (which we categorically allow) which changes from expansion to expansion (or even patch to patch). (I don't know anything about UO though)

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    I don't even think its too localized, I simply think they're off-topic. Questions about where to find prices of products are off-topic on SU too, I don't see why games should be any different
    – Ivo Flipse
    Dec 30, 2011 at 19:18

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As per Ivo's comment, the localized argument is quite poor and the proper one is that it's simply off-topic. I suppose declaring pricing as forbidden is fairly clean, though I don't think that should necessarily extend into banning other non-content meta-game questions.

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First of all, at least EVE Online has in fact changed its pricing (albeit temporarily) many times, but that's beside the point here.

There are a few reasons questions like these are harmful. First of all, there is the very real issue of links turning dead. Even if the site remains online, changes to the site can break links and not redirect, that kind of thing.

This is why we want answers to include their own content. A source is fine, but at least put the content in the actual answer as well in case the source ever goes down.

However, at that point, the question is asking for the current price, which makes the question too localized to give a proper answer. Prices do change, and we can't be counted on to always accommodate them. It's also a bit weird to give a game a free promotion every time it lowers its prices by virtue of the way our site works.

I just don't think this site is the kind of resource for this kind of thing.

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  • If uo.com went down for good, the question would be moot, not harmful, as UO would probably be gone as well.
    – Nick T
    Dec 30, 2011 at 19:58
  • @NickT Read the second paragraph again, especially the last sentence.
    – user56
    Dec 30, 2011 at 20:11
  • I feel I addressed that in my third paragraph, as business websites are far more stable than 'community' websites, and at the very least, more constant than many games.
    – Nick T
    Dec 30, 2011 at 20:29
  • @NickT To utilize what is still the only example I know of, EVE Online has had its site redesigned a few times and its link structure change before. Why would it not happen again?
    – user56
    Dec 30, 2011 at 20:30
  • I'm not saying it wouldn't, I'm saying it's misleading and confusing to compare that to the games themselves that change more rapidly then say one is too (temporally) localized while one more in flux isn't.
    – Nick T
    Dec 30, 2011 at 20:43

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