Is RPG.SE a good fit for encyclopedic-like questions and answers?

Question

The question What is a "Game Jam"? asks an interesting question, but maybe is a question asking information more suited to Wikipedia ("Game jam"), which excels at taking a thing, and telling you what it is, with lots of references and detail. Encyclopedic entries don't seem to be what rpg.se is about. Am I missing something?

It's not literally "what is" in the question I'm asking about. For instance, rpg.se has questions such as:

• "What is metal armor?"
• "What is hindering terrain?"

Clearly those are questions where the answer is specific to RPGs and maybe a specific RPG. It's clear to me that a good answer here to those questions are different than a good article on Wikipedia.

If "What is a "Game Jam"" is suitable for rpg.se, does that mean "What is D&D" and "Who is Gary Gygax?" good questions for rpg.se?

This meta question got instantly downvoted, and instant downvotes always make me feel like I'm approaching a question the wrong way, maybe I'm not asking the question correctly. It was prompted by the game jam question, because I didn't want to close vote without understanding the issue, but it's really about where's the line between rpg.se and other sources? To me, the game jam question seems better suited to other sources, but I'm happy to understand others' points of view.

Answer 1

Encyclopedic answers are exactly our jam.

In the early days of the site, Stack Overflow used this diagram to define itself:

This diagram was featured in the early network's About page, and mentioned in blog posts in 2009, in 2012, and in 2014. It was used prominently to indicate that we function more or less like all of these things: we are the overlap of all those functions. As the 2014 post puts it:

That’s the visual elevator pitch for Stack Exchange. We were the little dot in the middle, a potent mix of useful traits from other tools, a wiry mutt full of hybrid vigor. The purpose of this blend was to allow and encourage the construction of a library of solutions, by providing communities with the tools they needed to share their experiences and challenges with others who might struggle with the same issues.

The diagram illustrated where we stole drew inspiration for the design of those tools, and their influence occasionally shows up in the results. Sometimes, a question will end up more like a wiki, other times more like a blog, other times more like a discussion.

The Stack Overflow tour says:

With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed, high-quality answers to every question about programming.

This is the first introduction of the flagship Q&A platform, so I'm assuming it's very official and controlled and vetted by Stack Overflow corporate as an accurate mission statement.

The entire purpose of our existence is to build up a Q&A-driven knowledge base for future reference for all comers. It's why we have citation standards, score answers to elevate the best ones to prominence, and have accepted answers to show what best solved the problem for the person to ask about it. Encyclopedic answers are absolutely what we're about and here for.

Many things covered here can also be covered by an appropriately scoped Wikipedia article, but that's because we have that overlap with Wikipedia's mission to also build up a knowledge base. The fact we have overlap in function is deliberate and intended, not accidental or something we want to avoid.

But just as Wikipedia also does some things we do, we can do things Wikipedia can't do. Not everything we do is encyclopedic, and not everything we do that's encyclopedic would also belong on Wikipedia.

This question's great, answers to it will be great, and fielding it is exactly what we're here to do.