Why did the automobiles and telephones thread close?

Question

The discussion in Campaign Research Questions suggests that campaign research questions should be allowed.

Why did At what point in the 20th Century did automobiles and telephones become ubiquitous close? It didn't seem to be off-topic. Clearly, people didn't like it, but that's a reason to downvote it, not close it.

In any case, it sets a difficult precedent if we close threads we don't like, whether or not they fit the rules.

What happened?

Answer 1

I wonder why my question Where can I find good ship plans? wasn't summarily closed. That was very productive for me but seems to hit all the "real world trivia" buttons that closed Graham's thread.

If I had to guess, I'd say that it is entirely arbitrary.

Answer 2

I think it's a mistake to rule out this kind of question, especially when stated as extremely as here that we can ask questions about the World of Greyhawk, but not about the real world. This seems guaranteed to drive a wedge between one kind of gamer and another, for fear that the site will be plagued by hordes of questions about historical trivia, which I think is unlikely.

Here's a modest proposal. What if all such questions should be rephrased in terms of where the questioner can find useful resources to answer such a question? It would make the answers far more generally useful, and acknowledges that for the real world, the answer is generally 'out there' somewhere?

That's in line with both Online resource for names by culture and Good resources for travel times?, both of which seem to be regarded as acceptable.

Answer 3

Because, I think, theory discussion in meta is way less important than how things really play out on the real site.

In that meta thread, everyone was trying to be all inclusive and "sure, why not ask that."

Then when on the real site, you're faced with a question that is a miscellaneous trivia question with no specific link to RPGs, everyone closed it because it was obviously off topic.

My conclusion is that "oh sure, ask research questions on any old topic, if you're going to use it in an RPG" was an ill advised decision in that other thread, and the reality of the situation carried the day.

I'll go add a "no" answer to the meta question for completeness. Discussion and voting should really happen there if a wider scope than "what was wrong with this specific question" is desired.

Answer 4

One thing that I think a lot of the detractors are missing here, is a sense of scale. This isn't a "small" question, that could easily be hand-waved in a campaign setting.

This question isn't covering a minor detail which will be relevant for less than an adventure (if it's relevant at all), like the brand of a fragment of duct tape on a piece of pipe.

It also isn't covering a one-time loot issue, that any good GM will balance out anyway like how many magic hats drop from a specific legendary beast, or an easily Google-able value.

It isn't covering something that players will neither know, nor care about like the weather their grandparents saw on a specific date.

The existence of reliable cars and/or ubiquitous telephones fundamentally changes a campaign setting. It changes the stories you can tell, and how you have to stage them. It is fundamentally important to how the world works, and is something that you must know in order to use the game world effectively.

As an example, watch a few horror movies set in the present day and pay attention to the cell phones. Almost every movie will explicitly deal with the phones in some way: They get forgotten, jammed, are out of service, are confiscated, get lost, etc. The stories that the horror movies are attempting to tell are fundamentally incompatible with the existence of commodity cell phones, so they need to be excluded.

Cars and phones fall into the same camp. And while it's easy to exclude a technology for a single movie, it's much harder to exclude it from an ongoing RPG campaign, which is often intended to cover weeks or months of in-game time and offers the protagonists much greater freedom.

There may be a line to be drawn for questions about the real world. This question is well above it. The real world is, effectively, an open source shared campaign setting for a broad variety of games. Why should a game like Call of Cthulu or 7th Sea get less benefit out of this site than any other?

Ultimately, the only problem I had with that particular question was that it should have been two. The advent of cars and telephones don't really have a lot to do with each other in an RPG context.

Answer 5

Why I voted to close it

I voted to close that thread. My feeling is that questions here have to pertain specifically to RPG material. That can be game rules, game history, game design, game organization, game research, and so on.

But we also have to draw a line. Some stuff is off-topic, right? In fact, most questions one could ask are off-topic. Just because someone needs an answer for their game doesn't make it a game-related question.

For example, I might be interested in teflon tape recommendations when wrapping pipe threads for my Apocalypse World game, but RPG SE isn't the best place to get that answered.

Furthermore, @jmstar's Where Can I Find Good Ship Plans? question was asked 10 weeks ago, whereas @Jadasc's At what point in the 20th Century did automobiles and telephones become ubiquitous? question is new. I think this SE site is finding its way and a lot has changed in ten weeks.

Relevancy

So my rules for determining a question's relevancy:

1. Does the question pertain primarily to RPGs?
2. Do the majority of people reading this question care about the answer?
3. Does RPG StackExchange likely have the best expertise to answer the question?
4. Are RPG SE members interested in the question and answers?

None of these has a simple, cut-and-dried answer and there will always be judgment calls and corner cases.

For #2, I think tons of gamers will find lists of ship plans useful. I think far fewer gamers need to know precisely when certain technology became commonplace. Still, that's a terribly slippery slope.

For #3, gamers don't have any special expertise for answering history questions (Jadasc's or Jason's, for that matter). Really, both questions should probably be closed.

For #4, Jason's question got some traction: 6 upvotes and 6-7 answers (one with 6 upvotes). Jadasc's question got 1 upvote and two answers (with 3 and 2 upvotes). And no one voted to close Jason's.

I think, as gamers, we'd really like some firm rules here, but we're better off letting the community find its way.

Answer 6

A request for a tag.

My opinion on the matter largely coincides with @AdamDray so I won't bore you with repeating his fine arguments. Also, like him, I am not upset that the question is reopened.

However, I am asking for the question and any like it to be tagged with a game. Or at least agree on a general purpose tag. Something that I can use to easily ignore such questions.

The current 3 tags on it are all general purpose

• campaign-development - I'm definitely interested in this.
• settings - This tag doesn't mean much to me, but it appears to cover a wide variety of questions, some that I don't wish to miss.
• history - This tag clearly means different things to different people. It's covering a wide variety of topics. Some I am very interested in.

Answer 7

Personally, I didn't not like the question; that is to say I liked it. If I'd not liked it, I'd have down voted, which I did not.

My point is you down vote what you don't like; you close that which is out of place.

(Personally, I never see any reason to down vote a question, only answers, but that's another discussion entirely.)

It wasn't on topic. It's just off-topic trivia. The heart of the question:

How late in the 20th Century in the U.S. did telephones and automobiles become ubiquitous?

... is off topic, even if you prefix it with an RPG-related explanation. If it was on-topic, then one can argue that this is also on-topic:

My players have killed the Cretan Bull and now want to wear its stomachs as hats! How many stomachs do bulls have? Will there be enough stomachs for all of them?

... or:

As part of my game the Pythagoreans have found magical secrets in the digits of irrational numbers! What's the 100th digit of pi?

... or:

The player's have traveled back in time to Smarch 32nd 1963! What was the weather like on that day?

I'm sorry, but the intro doesn't make these questions on-topic: they're still just trivia which are not related to RPG.

How to make it on topic

• The question could have asked for settings and source books which catered to the player's needs
• The question could have described the setting the GM envisioned, and how it could be tweaked to accommodate that player's needs
• The question could have asked how to deal with such a demanding player
• The question could have asked how to include cars and phones in a game while preserving... whatever the player misses

etc.