Is asking about the design process of roll20 on-topic?

Question

How was the "target" of a spell chosen for the Roll20 Information Block?

That question was recently asked and has comments and various votes about whether it should be open or closed. Is it on-topic? To quote the current form of the question in full:

The PHB specifies that there are two parts in a spell description, the block of information and the spell's effect:

Each spell description in chapter 11 begins with a block of information, including the spell’s name, level, school of magic, casting time, range, components, and duration. The rest of a spell entry describes the spell’s effect.

The block of information contains the seven headings listed above.

D&D Beyond spell blocks of information retain the seven PHB headings but add two more; attack / save and damage / effect.

Roll20 Compendium blocks of information retain the seven PHB headings but add two more; target and classes.

In the PHB, a spell's target may be listed in the spell's effect, but then again it may not, which can lead to questions about what the target of a spell actually is. For many spells it simply is not clear what the target is.

Thus, the explicit listing of the target in the Compendium entries could be a valuable source of clarifying information, if they were official, which I doubt.

What was the process of selecting the target of a spell for the Compendium write-up?
Was it confined entirely to the Roll20 team, in which case the target listed there is clearly not RAW?
Did the WotC Design team offer guidance and suggestion as to the target listings, in which case a listed target might have the status of RAI?

The actual questions asked are those last three. Are they on-topic for this site?

Answer 1

This is a design intent question, which is off topic.

Roll20 designed a web based compendium of Wizards’ print material. As a part of this design, Roll20 made an interpretive choice by adding a “target” section to the spell descriptions. The question asks about the process behind these spell interpretations that Roll20 included as a part of their compendium design - why or how did they choose one interpretation or another? The question then asks if this design choice is related to Wizards’ own intent for the rules. This is the classic formulation of designer rule intent questions that we routinely close as off topic - “Why did X designer make Y decision about rule Z?” - which we do because the signal-to-noise ratio on those questions is so low that allowing them has historically had negative value.

Answer 2

Only very few people are involved in the design process of a database. In that, it is very much akin to the design of a game.

Who can tell us why a game (or in this case: a derivative database) is how it is? Only those that made it can. In some very rare cases, there is design commentary that explains those decisions, but in general, the community can't know such things.

One of the very few cases where such commentary exists is the Maid-RPG Nun-Approved File, which is the translator commentary on all the little and big changes, which not only sheds light on the intended tone and ideas of the game. Without such a file, we have to guess or need to be one of those people that have been part of the process - or fail at the Good/Bad Subjective and citation expectations!

As such, this question is asking for designer-reasons - and thus Off-topic due to the moderation effort.

Answer 3

It is on topic.

What was the process of selecting the target of a spell for the Compendium write-up?

Someone in our general sphere knows this, and no other stack supersedes us in that query. That the people who'd know the answer are likely to leave your question unanswered doesn't matter.

You are also gleaming at designer intent, which, if it would be the focus of the question, would make it off-topic.

Did the WotC Design team offer guidance and suggestion as to the target listings, in which case a listed target might have the status of RAI?

But your question itself doesn't invite speculation (that you might do on your own based on the result), our reasoning about rule intent generally doesn't apply because the first part is the core of the question. That the querent wants to also use the result for speculation or to conclude about intent is irrelevant. The question is about the historical fact of collaboration.

You might still attract many unfounded and speculative answers regardless of your careful wording — if that happens, we still might close it - as that is site practice. We shouldn't close your question before that might happen.

Answer 4

With the recent edit, this is now a question of historical fact and it is on-topic

The question asks:

Did the WotC Design team offer guidance and suggestion as to the target listings?

This is asking whether or not WotC and Roll20 collaborated. This is a question of historical record and no part of it is about the intentions of WotC or Roll20.

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One could argue the question still has an intent related bit:

What was the process of selecting the target of a spell for the Compendium write-up?

However, this sentence is immediately followed up with an explanation of what is specifically being asked:

Here I do not mean what was the intent behind it, but simply was the decision confined entirely to the Roll20 team, in which case the target listed there is clearly not RAW?

So even if the process question is a problem (personally, I dont think it is), that's not what's being asked for. The only thing being asked is about whether or not Roll20 and WotC collaborated. The potentially troublesome bit, in all honesty, could simply be removed and nothing about what's being asked would change.