We've discussed this before, but I think it's time to put the final nail in the coffin of Game Recommendation questions.
Take a look at the recommendations tag. The most recent stuff is first. Look for the items marked [closed]. You can see that all recent ones have been closed. Since August, none have survived. The recent open questions tagged with recommendations should probably be retagged, as they are using the term "recommendations" in a different way.
There hasn't been a lot of pushback during this time despite what some would surely call heavy-handed moderation. The big question is "How is our traffic?" Is the site growing?
YES
Traffic doubled from 9/1 to mid December. Christmas bumped us up again, we are now running at 3x of September's rate. I don't think we'll hold onto all of that bump in the short term, but Christmas did introduce a good number of people to the site for sure!
Board & Card Games is currently the fourth most traffic'd StackExchange Beta site! and is getting more traffic than two previously launched sites. This has been a great few months and I don't want to lose the progress.
While I wouldn't state that the rec game policy change is solely responsible, I believe it is a big part. Now I think we should formalize it. Update the FAQ, close the rest and move forward.
Why aren't Game Recommendation questions desirable for a Q and A site?
They seem so harmless, people love them, everybody can participate, let's enjoy them, right? They're awesome questions .... for a forum.
This is a Q & A site, Real Questions have Answers! Game Recommendation questions are asking for individual items or games, not really answers. People can earn a lot of rep just by being the first to mention a popular game. After all Dominion is probably a great answer for most any question that starts with "What's a good game for ...?" Folks then vote for the answer which says Dominion because they know it and agree that it's a good game for the purpose. There doesn't need to be any substance to the answer. Nothing is learned, no experience needs to be shared.
Votes should indicate quality.
Too many answers
It doesn't take an expert to recommend a game, anyone can do it. And will. Game rec questions can quickly grow to many answers. After a certain point, any new answer has virtually no shot at rising above the existing answers no matter how good it is. We can't expect folks to pick out the diamond in the rough when it's the 15th answer on a page. A great question will have upwards of 5 answers that we can evaluate and vote between.
They attract more recommendation questions
When people see these questions they think that they are allowed and acceptable here. We can't really fault them for this. Let's clean things up so that we avoid that confusion.
If you've read this far, thank you for your attention! I should note that we would be far from the only StackExchange site to make this decision. Sites that I know of that prohibit shopping or game-req questions include.
- SuperUser
- Gaming
- SciFi
- Fitness & Nutrition
- Andriod