11
\$\begingroup\$

We have a question that we treat as the canonical duplciation-target for "where do I find players?" questions: Where can I find other RPG players?

Today we got Where's a good place to play D&D online? and I VTC'd as a duplicate of the our canonical question.

I voted out of lack of certainty though, on the principle that closing prevents messes and can be reversed. (It's closed now.) I'm uncertain though because the answers for online options on the other question are either poor or just not well received, and they're way down the list in the vote rankings. Probably because the original question is about in-person play, and answers that challenge that frame just haven't been well-received for that question. I think that makes that question less canonical than we've been treating it.

The problem I'm pondering is whether duplicating questions about online play to that question might not be very useful. It's certainly useful to us because it keeps the site tidy. But since the point of duplication is to help people find answers, we should be sure that canonical questions do quickly help the majority of people whose questions we close as duplicates. It's been observed that someone will usually leave a Stack page to seek answers elsewhere if they don't see anything relevant in the top one or two answers, and the low quality of the online-focused answers there concerns me. (Can't find the cite offhand—someone know the SE blog post on that?)

I kind of feel like we need two canonical questions: one for in-person looking-for-group, and one for online looking-for-group. (Heck, we might even already have that second, and I just can't find it. We should make it more findable, if so! If we don't already, this new question is nice and tidy and might serve well, maybe by migrating the online-only answers from our other question?)

Uh, I need a short bolded summary question I guess, if I'm going to stick to my modus operandi, so:

Does our canonical Looking-For-Group question adequately serve people looking for online play, or can we do better somehow?

\$\endgroup\$
1
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ I also VTC'd on similar grounds (though I think I lazily checked off too-broad instead of dupe) but I agree that we may need a good sys-agnostic question for online roleplaying vs. IRL roleplaying. \$\endgroup\$
    – Joshua Aslan Smith
    Jan 19, 2015 at 21:51

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4
\$\begingroup\$

Our canonical question (at least my top-voted answer to it) ends up pointing to a variety of more specific questions about online play, because "online" isn't a thing, play by post, play by skype, online recruiting for play IRL, etc. are things. I'd close as one of those if it's clear which one they are looking for:

Finding online RPG players for a play-by-chat RPG Campaign?

Where can I advertise for players for my play-by-post game?

Or just to the main one if it's not clear, and let them read and click as they are moved by the Spirit.

\$\endgroup\$
2
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ As a primarily online roleplayer, there's two main categories: Play-by-post (asynchronous) and play-by-chat (synchronous). The medium isn't so important, though you could make a case for synchronous-with-tabletop (roll20) being a different experience than synchronous-without-tabletop (IRC). The play-by-post question only covers one half of the experience, but in theory we have both modes covered. \$\endgroup\$
    – Yamikuronue
    Jan 20, 2015 at 11:21
  • \$\begingroup\$ There are other options as well though, such as VTC (Video Teleconferencing), MeetingPlace, WebEX. I personally don't think the question is too broad, it is certainly no more broad than the same question for IRL gaming (the first link in the question) \$\endgroup\$
    – Escoce
    Jan 21, 2015 at 17:37

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .