Edit: If you disagree please post a comment to promote discussion.
I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss the subject of [game-rec] questions. I realize there are a number of topics on this issue with diverse responses (one even linked by Ivo here) and that I've responded in some, but I believe we need to come to consensus on this issue and that this is the best thread to do it in.
On the subject of [game-rec]; I am aware they are popular, certainly I have enjoyed some, but I strongly believe that gaming.se is not a good place for them. I find that they are detrimental to the community. Additionally, I believe that the stackexchange engine is a poor engine for providing these recommendations (I'll suggest a better alternative to emphasis this point later).
To address this, let us first consider why people think that gaming.se is a good place for these sorts of questions. Recommendations are a sign that people believe that the community is of high quality and thus the asker values our opinion. Additionally, the form of the stackexchange questions (Question followed by a series of answers which the community votes on) seems useful as good or bad recommendations can easily be identified by the voting. Finally, the presence of the "community wiki" seems a tacit approval to questions which do not have a single answer (as recommendations do not).
I've discussed why I believe that these questions are harmful in another thread; and even why they encourage further harmful behavior. I realize this may be considered a bit of a "slippery slope" argument but considering the rise of arguments like RCIX's it seems more and more present. To quote Grace:
Your "loophole" for getting the
question in is exactly the kind of
reasoning which has made me come to
dislike recommendation questions.
Speaking on substance, it is no
different than other questions asking
for a list of games with a specific
feature, like, say, a certain style of
costume design.
If we consider questions on their own merit, we see that there is little value beyond any other sort of list question. As we seem opposed to those as polls or "favorite," I see no reason that [game-rec] should be given special treatment.
The purpose of our site is to gather people of expert quality in the field of gaming to answer hard questions in that field. These people are drawn to questions of high detail on topic the experts on interested in. By comparison polls, favorites lists, and even game recommendations do not fall into that category. What's worse, the prevalence of [game-rec] questions makes the site seem of even lower quality. The result is detrimental to the continuing existence of this community.
To further supplement this discussion I'd like to posit that the stack exchange engine is not an ideally designed resource for game recommendations. Instead, using the stack exchange engine for this purpose is the equivalent of using a forum as a QA engine, and we all know how effective that is.
An ideal website for gaming recommendations will take into the account the following:
- the ability to rank suggestions (as SE does)
- the ability to discuss suggestions (which SE does poorly through comments)
- knowledge of the person asking (which SE does not support)
- the ability to identify specific traits in games (which SE does not support)
- the ability to contribute which suggests were successful (which SE does poorly as there maybe more than one answer)
From this list we can see that the stackexchange engine only supports a subset of the necessary features, and most of those poorly. What's worse, feature #3 is the most desirable feature (and not supported). Instead let us derive a website which would support these features. Consider a website which allowed you to identify which games you liked, ranked them, and allowed people to tag features of games. Such a site would allow for quick and easy identification based on specific traits. Additionally, user data could be analysed for automatic suggestions. Finally, people would be able to comment on which games where like others with a simple voting system to help people identify which suggestions were good or bad.
As you can see even this elementary example is vastly superior to stackexchange for this purpose. It draws on elements of websites like Amazon.com and Netflix.com which uses user rankings to make suggestions and get a "feel" for what users would like. A social version of this would allow other users to get that "feel" quickly and easily and thus increase the effectiveness of their recommendations. Without the ability to get the "feel" the recommendations are little more than guesses. It is this reason, above all others, why game-rec questions are such a bad decision on gaming.se. The resulting answers have little merit beyond listing highly ranked games in the same genre (which other sites already do effectively).
If gaming.se is to survive and become a successful community of experts, I do not believe that game recommendations have any place.