Yes! Custom close-reasons are now a thing that is coming fast to our site! Among with other important changes to closing putting questions on hold. Start here:
Closing changes: [on hold], unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized
Those changes aren't yet live on Arqade, but they'll soon be. And just as soon, we'll get to customize the off-topic close reasons. This what SE came up with on MSO:
In other words, we'll use this to enumerate our blanket questions bans, perhaps with an explanatory link and tips on how to fix them if possible. To my recollection our blanket question bans are about:
- Game recommendation
- Game identification without concrete elements (a.k.a. identify-this-game)
- Lore questions without supporting canon
- Piracy and support thereof
- Speculation about unreleased games
- Game design ("Why did they do it like X?" a.k.a. ask the devs)
- Multiplayer cheating which violates a games end user agreement.
Where do you come in? Well, those close reason aren't gonna write themselves! SE team will have to okay our entries, but our destiny is mostly in our hands. Plus, I might've missed something.
Some things to keep in mind to make everybody's life easier:
- Make it simple. New users will be reading those and they won't be used to our lingo.
- Make it solid. Avoid using expressions that could be used as an (invalid) retort to the close reason: don't say we require something concrete or else the question is guesswork/unclear/unhelpful/who cares; just say we require something concrete period. We can explain if asked.
- Make it short. There's no need to write a treaty. The limit is 500 characters of markdown (links count!).
- Make it need-to-know. Linking to meta is only helpful so far as it helps users drag the question into the realms of acceptability. There's simply no need to point a new user to the eleventy bajillion questions on meta and discussion on chat we've had about game-rec. Want to point to LessPop's treaty on acceptable game identification? That's more useful.
- Make it three. Apparently three close reasons is all we get, at least at the beginning.