#The policy doesn't need to change; the site's infrastructure itself does

tl:dr Instead of "soft-requiring" System/Edition tags via closing questions that don't have them, the site should change to "hard-requiring" them to be able to post questions in the first place. (This is different from requiring at least one tag.) The fact that it's required doesn't change, but the headache the first system causes is reduced.

###Why Closing is detrimental to the site

Closing Questions outright carries a punitive implication that simply doesn't give us a good rep. Despite whether new users should view it this way or whether they should just "toughen up", that is how it comes across. Nothing we do will change that because closing a question is inherently a snub.

Another thing is that we aren't "Experts" in the same way that a StackOverflow user is an Expert. In the vast majority of cases, we are not critical to the performance of someone's job, and a misinterpretation of the rules won't get lots of people fired. We're playing games.

When we close new questions commonly, it reinforces the stereotype of us as a Nerd-Clique, which is something we should be trying to avoid for the sake of the site's health.

###Some users have brought forth concerns of Burnout, or of preventing mistakes, not repairing them I agree with these concerns, though I don't think that they should trump or be trumped-by issues of our image. I think that the current way our site works makes it difficult to appeal both to new users and to experts.

On the side of New Users, it is frustrating to get your question closed, especially if that new user is a new RPG player who might be unfamiliar with the breadth of how many RPGs actually exist, or how much context is important to their question.

On the side of expert answerers, it is both frustrating when we constantly have to ask for more info (both because of an incredibly strict rule and because of a lack of information) before being able to answer a question, especially if it is a question we want to answer because we can definitely determine what a user is discussing (as in, having pages from that RPG-edition's core book), and it does cause burnout.

Both of the concerns here are valid. And, something to note: Neither is less-valid than the other, because both pools are equally important to site health:

• If the experts leave, then the knowledge pool of this site falls apart. Some users will still create quality answers, but many of the top privilege-holders will go away.
• If the new users die, we'll just stop seeing as many questions. Experts will leave because the site will seem dead and we will see issues of stagnation and eventual death.

###Instead of "Optimizing" for one of these two critical groups, we should change the site

One thing we could do would be to make System/Edition tags (or the System Agnostic tag) required in a question. This would have several benefits:

• Avoiding having to "Optimize" for anyone by requiring that users performing tasks as-basic as adding tags for system and edition. This saves a lot of headache for everyone involved because it just takes a step that should be mandatory to submitting a question in the first place and makes it mandatory.
• It introduces new users to tags, and shows them how the tag system works. Many forums don't have tags, or they aren't that important, which is one reason why new users may not be familiar with them.
• It helps manage "Shopping Questions", namely, the kind which ask us to recommend RPGs. By not having a System/Edition tag (which would be required to post a question), it is more difficult to post these kinds of questions.

Note that this isn't merely "requiring tags," but it requires "System-Edition" tags. The color of these tags could be changed, say, from beige to green, to indicate their required status, and to differentiate the "Dungeons_and_Dragons" tag (which is not a System/Edition tag and is commonly misused) from the "dnd_[X]e" tag (where X is the edition number), which is a common source of tag confusion.