Are "list questions" on topic?

Question

A “list question” is a question that generates an endless list of answers, none of them better or worse than any other. They're questions that ask things like “list all the things I could do with a sword” or “tell me all the spells that are cool” or “what do you use for an initiative method?”. For a longer answer see What are list questions?. (Since 2012ish “list question” has been outdated terminology; it's frequently misunderstood to mean questions answered with a bulleted list.)

Should we allow and encourage list/collection questions here? The tradition on the trilogy has been to allow a very few and force them to be CW questions. It seems, like many of the other betas, we are collecting quite a few early on.

These questions aren't popular with the management, and I feel that they devalue the site. They add clutter, they abuse voting, and they don't interest experts. Beyond that they can be found everywhere else on the web (List of Gurps Books, List of Campaign Settings, etc).

I believe we need to commit early on, that we're going to close these questions as they come up. What does the community think?

Edit: as time has gone on SE management consensus is against pure list questions, but @GraceNote has a good post on how they can be transformed from lists into good questions - I recommend reading it.

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Answer 1

No, list questions—questions which will generate an endless stream of undifferentiated answers—are not on topic. They're covered by the bullet points in our questions to avoid asking and should be closed.

Do note that a question doesn't have to have a single provably “right” answer to not be a list question. It just has to be able to have a “best” answer by the guidelines of Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. Most gm-techniques questions, for example, don't have a provably right answer, but by sharing their experience there's certainly a most helpful answer.

Note that a list question is not one where the answer is a short list of items. A question about “which ioun stones will give me a stat bonus?” can yield a correct answer that is a short list of items. “Which magic items are cool?” on the other hand yields an infinite list of answers where there is no qualitative measure of which is most helpful. @GraceNote explained it better here: So, what actually is a game rec?

See also:

• Real questions have answers
• Q&A is hard, let's go shopping!
• What are list questions?

Answer 2

Heh. I am of course guilty of answering some of these. Mea culpa...

I think there's a line to be drawn between generic non-preferential lists and questions about the best way to do something. Some of the latter will tend to be phrased as list questions. I like the paleolithic RPG question because AHM explained why he was looking for what he wanted, rather than just asking for everything that would fit in the basket.

Is there a useful distinction to be made between asking for lists of techniques (storing miniatures) and lists of things (the character build questions)?

Answer 3

It seems that we're conflating two categories of question here. Stefano is talking about lists of custom spells, etc., which are really a form of the best practices/techniques that Bryant mentioned. Lists of books, etc. are very easy to find on wikipedia or wherever and don't seem to add much value to the site. Lists of practices/techniques definitely add value in my opinion.

Answer 4

Against closing.

List of entities, such as custom spells, artifacts, monsters, or short adventures are very useful for people looking for new ideas. This SE is not a technical Q/A which accepts clear cut answers, we should be more liberal in what we consider a good question, and the core is more to provide peer-evaluated information exchange, not "this is right, this is wrong", unless we only accept questions about the rules, that can be generally answered without asking, just by looking up in rulebook.

Clearly, for list-"questions", the concept of "green tickmark" vanishes, and for this reason, the question must be CW from the very beginning.

Also, don't underestimate traffic. The existence of such SE is bound to an evaluation in 3 months time. We are probably not going to have a lot (stackoverflow size) of traffic in the long run, and it's also difficult to continue keeping a reasonable stream of traffic (both in terms of visits and questions/answers). The more questions we consider to be closed down, the smaller will be the community participation and revisit value, and the higher the chances that we have everything closed down and say "bye bye, back to forums".

Answer 5

If a question isn't picking up many answers and, in particular, up-votes on the question itself, then it's a good sign that it's a candidate for closure.

On the other hand, if the community are showing they like it then keep it open.

This is what the vote system is for.

Answer 6

I am against list questions in general but it seems some of them are useful. Not the ones that expire a week after they're posted, though. Examples...

Fighting Skills equivalent to skills Not a good candidate for a list.

What are some good chance/luck-themed spells for Sorcerers? This one is about an edition with very little publishing still going on so answers (this far after release) can be counted as more-or-less complete for a while to come.

Something in these questions seems to not work with the "one best answer" goal: Do lists with better quantity get priority over ones with better quality? That'd depend on the asker of course as to who is accepted. Suppose we got many high quality answers but few high quantity - that question will maraud the front page as people keep coming by to drop one-liners or small, poor answers.

How we can draw the line between "good" and "bad" list questions would be useful to spell out.