How long should one wait before reposting a question that was closed per "don't guess the system"?

Question

Sometimes valid questions come through that do not explicitly identify the attendant RPG system. Usually, the querent returns to clarify in a timely fashion. But what if they don't?

How long should one wait before reposting the question with the appropriate tags?

The idea here is that we have a valid question as long as we assume a particular system. Policy says we do not tag the question if it's not explicitly specified, but it does not say I cannot ask a corresponding question myself that specifies an appropriate system.

It seems obvious that permitting immediate reposting is a terrible idea. The "new user optics" of such a scenario seem pretty bad. A new user takes the time to craft a good question, leaves off a tag and fails to mention the system causing the question to be closed, and seconds later another user has reposted their question with the appropriate tags. What do they think when they come back? This seems totally wrong.

There should surely be some length of good-faith cooling off time, but there's come a point, I think, where the community should be permitted to repost the question - the question should not remain in limbo because someone forgot a tag.

This question was inspired by this mainsite question and this associated meta.

Answer 1

Ask if you're interested

Back in the day, if we guessed a system wrong, it was usually because the question was genuinely interesting in another system. Then we'd repost the question we thought it was and the answers based on that system and the question for the OPs real system would also get answered and we'd end up with two (or, well, at least one) decent q&a's. Or, at least, that's how it went when things went best.

Similarly, if you have a genuinely interesting question in mind in response to reading a putatively 'unclear' question, you shouldn't let the fact you think that's what the OP is asking already prevent you from asking it separately-- that would assume you can correctly guess the system. Instead, assume that you may have not correctly guessed the system, and so your question isn't a dupe and doesn't prevent the OP's question from being re-opened, provided they actually secretly meant a different game that just happens to match very closely all the indicators you were looking for to tell it was the game you were thinking of, possibly down to an abbreviated form of the name, publication year, book titles, and trademarked and copyrighted materials/branding.

Asking helps new users

Besides making fake sense in our legal paradigm for system-tag-handling, this also makes actual sense. While you seem to think that having their question asked by a different user will put people off from this site, I can tell you from direct experience that it is actually the exact opposite situation. Every time I have stepped in and re-asked a new user's question with a complete and substantial rewrite to the point that it would not be an acceptable edit, they have been quite grateful. New users don't care that much about rep, they care about getting their actual real-life problems solved, and re-asking their questions for them when they are overwhelmed by our site's frankly rediculous treatment of new users and the effort required to proceed is very large for them saves them a great deal of tribulation, teaches them how to use the site way better than just making them do it themselves all the time does (for all the 'they'll learn best by doing' out there, actually giving people examples and explaining how it's done and why is still a significant part of how we do it in schools for a reason), and gets them the answer they need right now in the simplest fashion.

An example of this in practice is: How to make your players hate your villain, but not your game

It wasn't the user's first question, mind you, but it was pretty early in their learning process here.

Answer 2

Until you are actually having the problem in that original question.

From our tour:

Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do.

This is reinforced in the help page.

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. (emphasis mine)

In my general experience, questions made "out of curiosity", with the very specific exception of theoretical optimization questions, tend to not be great questions. As doppel explains very well:

We want such questions to be asked by people actually experiencing that problem. When you're asking without having the problem yourself, it's not a real situation so you're not really able to provide the clarity we might want. You wind up asking a lower-quality question this way than someone actually experiencing the problem might ask, and that might actually do a disservice to the people having that problem: now the only version of that question is not actually the best quality one that could be had.

Whenever any other person (or you) is facing the same problem, they should ask the question again, with the proper system tag - doesn't matter if in the next hour or the next month. See What to do if seeking the answer to an existing question that's been closed because the system wasn't specified? for reference.

Answer 3

At least 24 hours after the OP stops responding, and then only if you would ask it on your own behalf

First, you shouldn't repost the question unless you want to ask it on your own behalf. If and when you do repost, you should be posting as yourself, rather than in lieu of the OP, and you should be able to fully justify the question based on that.

Once you've gotten that far, though, I agree that there is a benefit to the community of trying to make the first few experiences of asking questions be positive ones... assuming the quality of the question can justify it. If the question is intriguing enough that you want to ask it for yourself, and the only thing wrong with it is that the OP didn't think to include appropriate tags, then there is clearly some quality to the question. I'd say give it 24-48 hours after the OP stops communicating. People have large chunks in their day where they are not available to the computer for one reason or another, but it's reasonable that a user who actually cares about the answer to a question will check back in at least once over the course of a day. Once that period has past, there's a decent chance that they're one of the many who just drops contact entirely, and you can go ahead.