Is trivia on-topic?

Question

We have an old question about trivia questions that we wrestled with, without a real consensus emerging:

• How do 'Trivia' Questions meet the requirements for posting?

I went searching out that question due to recent wrangling over various questions, but it's too out-of-date to be a good resource, since it predates the Great Close Vote Overhaul. A lot of the dissent there, including my own, stemmed from trivia not actually qualifying as closeable under the old votes. I feel like we need to revisit this topic in light of the changes to our closing process and the recent conflicts over "unclear" holds.

So, are trivia questions on-topic? Is "I'm curious" or "The problem is that I don't know the answer" an OK reason for a question?

NB: "Trivia" and "trivial" don't mean the same thing. Avoid conflating them in this meta as that will just cause confusion.

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^{(This post is light on context and links because I wrote it on my phone. Feel free to add context and links that are relevant, especially if it would be helpful when this question is older and no-one knows what conflicts it's referencing.)}

Answer 1

I think the matter of whether a question is trivia or not is a red herring here. So is whether the reason behind the question is "I just wanna know."

I'm considering a "trivia" question to be one where the asker's just curious and wants to learn something, but it won't necessarily solve a practical problem they have. They just want to learn something. Trivia questions by this definition are not necessarily trivial to answer, though.

Trivia questions are trivially not inherently bad

(This doesn't mean they're inherently good either.)

We've had lots of questions that are effectively asking for trivia, that are also good questions, cited in this very discussion:

• Who created the idea of Experience Points?
• What's the inspiration for the owlbear?
• Mostly everything in history-of-gaming.
• Is there a name for the standard 7-die set?, which might sound like that 8-sided dice name question.

History of gaming questions probably have a lot of questions asked just because someone wants to know, though it goes entirely unsaid.

The fact we accept this stuff means that something other than someone being curious is the common factor in the bad trivia questions we close. So a question being trivia, or someone just wanting to know, is not the factor we should be looking at. We have to be psychic to know why they're asking the question anyway, unless they say.

They just usually suck in some other way.

• What games have complex rules for arrow removal? was a big list question, just like any other game-rec question that was accidentally way too broad. (Being just curious just meant there were no finer criteria to make it good.)

• We had a (now deleted) question about what games George R R Martin plays, which is hardly relevant to anything.

• What was it like growing up through the Dungeons and Dragons moral panic? was a survey.

I'm not sure, in reality, what the fate of the Drizzt's panther question would be or how the 8-sided dice question would go. They might get trivially answered. The former might be received quite well if someone says "I need to look the panther up and learn about it to play it as an NPC in this game of mine, and later I'll stat it."

It seems that when someone's asking trivia, or just wants to know something, that isn't the problem itself. They'll just be more inclined to end up asking the kind of question that doesn't work well on our site, because they're more likely to dive into the domain of questions we don't handle well. We get "I just wanna know" comments appearing almost exclusively in irrecoverable closed questions, but those comments aren't themselves the origin of the problem.

For the most part, I think mxyzplk is right in suggesting it's mainly because we want to be answering decent, stimulating questions, not a bunch of inconsequential questions about things that don't matter beyond "oh hey now I know." We would rather focus our efforts on meaningful stuff that makes a significant difference to people.

But mainly it's probably just that the trivia questions end up sucking somehow most of the time. Trivia questions are fine. Just not the ones that end up crap.

Answer 2

No, trivia questions are off-topic.

We should adhere to the SE-wide guidance, re-echoed in our Help Center here, that

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.

Though it doesn't specifically say "trivia bad," I think it's pretty clear that all the guidance in What type of questions should I avoid asking? leads away from trivia questions.

"I just wanna know" is not a problem. It's not that someone doesn't deserve an answer to their trivia question - but, like many things, this isn't the place to get it.

An interesting case is a number of well-answered and well-received questions in history-of-gaming - are those questions trivia or not? I think they are not because the are not... trivial. They are actual history questions. There's a difference between "How did the Nazis come to power in Germany" and "What did Hitler name his dog?" Both are historical - one is trivial. There are an infinite amount of trivia questions and they don't help anyone with their game.

The main question I think is whether our site is one that helps you become a better practitioner - like Stack Overflow - or one that is just for the curious to ask trivia questions, like Movies.SE. I think we should be the former. A "Making Movies SE" would likely ban trivia. We are a "Running and Playing RPGs SE." We should focus on that. Nonsense can go elsewhere - it otherwise dilutes the site for serious gamers.

Do we want a bunch of questions like Movies.SE and Scifi.SE?

• What is Drizzt's panther's name?
• What is the name of the 8-sided die?
• What is the Greyhawk name "Zagyg" based on?

These questions don't make you or your game any better. Ask them on a forum. I know that personally, the furor over the latest crap questions has bled my time away from answering people asking the actual meaningful questions about playing the game. Is that what we want? I say no, that's not why I joined this site, contribute to it, and became a mod on it.

Much like with campaign historical research questions, I think people understandably initially wanted to "allow all kinds of questions here!" and so voted in favor of this kind of thing. But as with those questions, over time we see how it really doesn't fit the metaphor of the site and people in practice kick back against them.

Over time the site has been victim to many "Hey does any game do X?" questions, and they always turn out bad. Either they're a list, or they are properly answered with "Yes.", or they have to get revamped into a much better game-rec or design question.

Answer 3

Some Folks Need the Basics

I think it's premature to place a wholesale ban on all trivial questions without first establishing a baseline for what trivial means in relationship to the asker's role-playing game experiences and familiarity with the cultures that publish the vast majority of role-playing games.

A new GM who wants to run a time travel game might totally need the name of Hitler's dog, and while we're all computer savvy enough to hunt down such information quickly (4 seconds and it's Blondi), were that new GM some 80-year-old lady in a retirement home who wanted to run an RPG for her fellow retirees, she might struggle to find that information, and it's possible she might end up here.

It's highly unlikely, of course, but there it is.

And I'd like to think--rather than closing her question as trivial--we'd want to help her because A) new members deserve community support even if they lack our skills and experiences, and B) that old lady's awesome.

Further, someone coming in cold with a question that initially looks stupid like What's a hit point? probably deserves an answer because, while the site's for running and playing role-playing games, a new player has to start somewhere.

Honestly, if someone's first question is What is Drizzt's panther's name? (3 seconds and it's Guenhwyvar), that's probably fine. If that's someone's fifth, thirty-seventh, or hundred-sixth question, then action can be taken.

Answer 4

Banning questions that are basically a request to solve the problem of ignorance is IMO a very bad idea.

Questions like this one, also could be called trivia, but they are much more than that. In an even fight, how many rounds does a typical monster need to drop a PC? There is no "problem at the game table" that this question solves, yet the answer helps people understand the game systems better, and helps establish expectations. All good things, which are not precise problem, but also are not trivia.

There is a world of difference between "trivia" and "The problem is that I don't know the answer." If you want to ban questions like "What is Drizzt's cat's name" then such questions can easily shown to be unnecessary by asking, "What research have you done so far?" Trivia can be found out with a simple google search, but questions where the problem is that they don't know the answer can not. I think making people jump through hoops, and to lie and craft stories about some hypothetical problem just to get them answered, isn't going to help anyone in the long run.

For example, the question I asked about regarding different games and if they have the same phenomena of as 3e is apparently for some people simple trivia. To me, it's an important understanding of game design. However, I could easily "game" the site, and re word my question to pretend it's some more concrete problem, and the answers will be the same.

I could instead ask for a game recommendation, in which I am able to play a class that is very good at something another class is supposed to be good at. I could word this question as if I'm looking for a game to play so I can try out this character concept. I could do that, but I would be lying.

Making rules which encourage people to lie about their problems just so they can be answered, is, in my opinion, a terrible idea. At best it makes people feel awkward, and at worst it can cause people to view all new questions with suspicion rather than to assume good will.

Since there is some doubt about the ability to reword the question, I imagine I could write something similiar to the following.

I really enjoyed the aspect of pathfinder that made picking a wizard to play a thief a secret, unintuitive optimization success story. I would like to do something similar in another game that isn't related to pathfinder. I have three charachter concepts in mind that would be fun for me if it's possible.

1. A mechanic that is better at fixing and getting scrap material than the assigned mechanic class.
2. A supernatural creature who is better at seduction and silent killing than the creature which has that reputation.
3. A combat veteran who is better at defeating bad guys in a fight than the soldier/fighter class of that system.

Which game can I play to create either one or all three of those scenarios?

An answer to the above question will answer my 'secret' question. It's also a bit of hoop jumping, and frankly I think requiring people to know enough about the site's history to figure out which fake question to ask is counter productive. But, if that's the only way to get questions answered then that's what we will have to do.