29
I think it is a terrible idea to revert the policy
I disagree, strongly, with the assertion that questions are so often “reasonably clear.” I feel that I have often assumptions made that are incorrect. I also flatly deny—as objective fact—the claim that there is “no harm” in answering such questions. Mistaken assumptions create an unholy mess for no good ...
26
Revert the policy, and treat these edits like any other
The moderation team believes it’s time to revert this policy and restore the way we handle system information to the default way we handle every kind of post and tag edit: exercise good judgement, and edit when you’re fairly sure. In other words: The new policy is to have no specific policy.
Being ...
22
It's precisely because a system tag can sometimes be assumed that it never should be.
Back-shelf RPG guy here for a perspective. Here's a couple of questions that put a certain impression on me. One's about a druid who wants to turn into a blink dog. One's about mitigating the effects of critical hits.
Neither of them's about D&D - the first one is ...
21
The endless arguments across Meta show that there are problems no matter what policy is used. These problems are caused because questions that should have system tags do not have them.
We can maintain the policy and people will go against it when they add a screamingly obvious system tag and are told not to do so, resulting in irritation and upset for users....
18
I wrote an answer about this a while back, here's a shorter version
Get clarification first / promote better engagement with new users
One of the advantages of asking the question "What game/system/edition are you playing?" and waiting to get that answer is that we treat whomever asks the question as a person (which IMO is important for the new user ...
17
Re-ask the question with the appropriate system tag
(The following is a summary of what, as far as I can tell, should be done under the current policies and is neither my endorsement nor lack of endorsement for those policies; debates of them are best left in the various Metas more specifically about them)
Given the current policy to never add a system tag ...
15
Here's how this breaks down:
We do not, in point of fact, have a problem with answers talking about designer reasons.
We do have a problem with answers making big claims without proportionate citation, and with misleading answers. This usually gets corrected by downvoting.
Questions asking about designer reasons were banned because, simply, we saw a ton of ...
8
No, the ability to ask questions about a topic on Meta is not part of any policy.
Meta posts will always be able to decide individual cases
This didn't become a new part of the policy following KRyan's suggestion; it has always been part of the policy. Creating a meta post to propose something, reaching community consensus, and then acting on it is a ...
8
I think this slightly misunderstands why the answer was deleted.
(And, for the record, I'm not sure I agree with the deletion. But that's prejudiced by my friction with the "never tag the system" practice that was recently re-upheld by the community.)
Problem is, seems to me: your deletion is a bit of a bank-shot. It's not that RPGSE has a policy ...
8
I know I am likely to be the minority voice here, but for the sake of future reference, I have decided to add this answer, so there is at least one counter argument. Let me start by saying that I respect the never-guess-the-system policy. However, I believe that policy cannot apply here, as there is nothing to guess.
NathanS did not mention the following ...
7
Please let’s not.
The entire point of that section of my answer was that isn’t worth anyone’s time or effort. It would be “an approach,” that would avoid the biggest problems with “just editing,” but it still isn’t a good idea.
Why? Because there is absolutely no value in doing so. The entire Stack Exchange model is about amplifying signal over noise. For ...
7
What the policy says
As far as I have gathered, the main point of this policy is to not edit a question to give it a system tag when the system is not 100% clear from the context. This is merely a specification of the generally accepted fact that editors should try to enhance a post without changing its message. Apparently, with no source I can find, people ...
6
This meta site is for many things, including (but not limited to) the following:
Asking about content on our main site, Role-playing Games Stack Exchange (RPG.SE)
Discussing policies for using the main site, such as how to (and how not to) ask, edit, tag, and answer questions
Polling feedback from the site moderators and active users
Asking about using the ...
5
Up front, just for some perspective, I want to point out that we don’t really have a problem here. Like, there isn’t a rash of ambiguously-history-or-intent questions that we need to deal with, there aren’t a bunch of history-of-gaming questions attracting the same kinds of problematic answers we saw with designer-intent, or a ton of solid history-of-gaming ...
4
A resource list of previous, related posts
FAQ post and revisits:
What to do when an edit guesses the system being used rather than waiting for the querent to clarify?
Revisiting our "never guess the game system" policy
Re-revisiting the "don't guess the system" policy
General Discussion:
When is it OK to assume the system without ...
4
These questions should be unprotected going by the Privileges page
The Privileges page describes protected questions as follows:
[...] Questions should be protected when they are attracting poor answers from new users that exceed the volume which can be moderated in a timely manner.
Questions should be unprotected when they are no longer attracting large ...
4
It is a violation of the policy, strictly speaking. There are many games that have five or more editions, so “2e” and “5e” could well be references to those systems—nothing in the question confirms that they are playing D&D 5e. Officially, the Forgotten Realms is a setting only for Dungeons & Dragons, but that doesn’t stop anyone from using it for ...
4
If a question is unclear, close it until the querent engages and clarifies
That was the MO when I stumbled across this site over 5 years ago.
Perhaps our problem - as beautifuly illustrated by @Medix2's list of meta Q&As on this topic - is that we have, as a community, forgotten the KISS principle.
This SE didn't used to have any qualms about closing a ...
3
On Rules, Policies, and Practices
Unlike a number of traditional forums and other places, RPG.SE (and other stacks) don’t really operate on a set fixture of hard rules (we have some, see below), we primarily operate on best practices. These practices are hard to articulate in completeness into words, so you won’t find a nice set of Q&A describing all of ...
3
Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed.
If we do not know what the question is, answers cannot possibly answer it. Fundamentally, the question cannot be answered in such a state. Any answer to such a question is subject to deletion per this rule. There doesn’t need to be another one.
And this question was unclear: it did not ...
2
Explicitly state that what qualifies as "backed up" is subjective (up to human judgement), and provide examples of ways to back up an answer
I do believe that explicitly stating that "evidence" and what counts as "backed up" is subjective would help. This removes power from the sentence "You need to back up your answer!" because whether or not that is true ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
