We need to take a look at list questions

Question

The F.A.Q. doesn't actually forbid list questions, instead forbidding a specific subset of those questions. However, the fact remains that we are NOT a reference site. This format (Q & A) is never going to be a good reference site builder because of how the content is solicited. Any time one person could not reasonably be expected to answer the question, that's a fairly good indication that you just asked a bad question.

I'm not talking about hard questions. You know, the ones that there are only a few individuals on the planet, known by some as experts, know the answers to. I know previously people have declared that limited lists are okay. There are quite a lot of questions that deal with lists throughout a large amount of meta. I know that's a lot of reading to get through, but I know you can handle it.

We also have the additional provision in the above mentioned FAQ that questions should be asked from an actual problem and not from idle curiosity. It seems like many of the list questions may have a difficult time meeting this criteria.

So after a two years of accepting these kind of questions, the question we need to ask ourselves is "Are they generating good content?".

I have intentionally not called out specific users or questions in this post because I don't want us getting distracted in the conversation. I would say that you need to post examples in any answer that you give (I know I will be in mine) on either side of line.

Answer 1

TL;DR: Yes, allowing limited lists has generated some good content, and we should continue to allow them, but we should also continue to monitor them and edit to improve wherever possible.

So after a two years of accepting these kind of questions, the question we need to ask ourselves is "Are they generating good content?".

I looked through for some specific examples. I found some that I feel are good content, some that I feel are bad, and some that I feel fall in between.

Good:

• Is there a list available of all of the rules of acquisition? I think this is an interesting question that will appeal to many fans of Star Trek, and also contains a fairly useful reference. I consider this quality content for our site.

• Is there a list of Stargate 'arc' episodes anywhere? Another question that will appeal to many people looking to start watching this show. Again, I consider this quality content for out site.

• Where can I quickly check if a given X-Files episode is a MOTW or arc episode? Same as above (and directly referenced by the Stargate question as inspiration).

• Where can I find a list of all the Superman comics' shield numbers? This one did not receive many votes, but I think it is of fairly obvious use to any fans of the title. Good content.

• What is the complete list of ships in the Futurama Mobius Dick graveyard for us die hard scifi fans? This is actually one of my favorites, simply because it highlights what I consider one of the best uses of this site: answering those nagging questions that may come after viewing a show.

• Attempting to identify various time travel devices in a comic book image This is another great one, imo. My only gripe is that the answers are contained in the question, and not posted as an answer. Still good, interesting (and fun, since it had, when first posted, a bit of the feel of a treasure hunt) content.

• In The Lord of the Rings, what important background information is contained in the poems? Great question; amazing answer. The answer appears to be wholly original research, too.

• Is there a list of significant "foreshadowed" ideas/details between Harry Potter fanfiction and Harry Potter 5/6/7 books that were released later? I think its an interesting premise, and I also think the specific fanfic highlighted in the answer adds a ton of value towards making it a good question. The answer provided demonstrates the expert-level knowledge in the subject matter that this site is about. The implications of the answer are a testament both to the consistency and vision of H.K. Rowlings' work, and to the examples of high quality of HP fanfic that is out there.

Bad

• Are there reference sci-fi websites that maintain lists of "must have" books? Honestly, I'm not really clear why this is even open. It isn't even a limited list, but completely open-ended. It also was made community wiki, and then highlights exactly why this is bad practice: it has done nothing but garner a handful of sporadic "me too" answers, and never was maintained into a single comprehensive listing (which is the only good use of CW).

• Is there a list of Force powers? This is a limited list, but was fundamentally flawed, as identified by the accepted answer. The scope of the list would have been way too long, and already existed in some form on Wookiepedia (which the OP indicated they had already seen).

• Is there any specific total count/detail/list of Wesley Crusher's womanizing? I actually don't see anything wrong with this question... aside from the lack of interesting answers. 2-3 possible romantic entanglements isn't much of a list. Ironically, if the list of answers were bigger, I'd put this in the "good" content category.

In Between

• What is the complete list of all "Starship Troopers" comics? Potentially useful. Unanswered. Potentially too big to answer? I don't know, but the lack of votes and responses doesn't really speak too well for its quality (but again, I don't see anything wrong with the question itself).

Answer 2

TL,DR Feel free to scroll to the conclusion section and read only that.

Here's the reasons I think list questions are bad:

I think that they run afoul of the idle curiosity clause in the FAQ. I can't remember a single non-idle-curiosity list question. Of course, that said, I don't have any examples since you can't prove the negative.

They tend to generate poor content. Most of the content that they generate could be found on other sites, more suited to list delivery.

They generate content that this Q & A site is poorly formatted to deal with. We don't have table support and it doesn't seem like it's likely to magically show up. I've see it asked for here with zero response from SE itself. Without table support, list formatting can become quite the chore.

Here's a list of every single list question that I could find in the range of today going back to the first of the year.

1. Which actor has portrayed the most distinct roles in the Star Trek universe?
2. What were all the occasions where the Star Trek Captains have met each other?
3. Who are all the characters to have touched The One Ring?
4. Is there any use of Claytronics in Star Wars lore?
5. What neutral planets existed at the time of the Rebellion? (this is a question I edited to make a non-list question, the original question and the comments are pertinent to this discussion)
6. How many people who weren't superheroes did Batman reveal his identity to?
7. What else did Pa Kent salvage from Jor-El's son's rocket?
8. Where else do we see James T. Kirk, computer hacker extraordinnaire?
9. What characteristics does Alpha/Beta wolf have in Twilight Series?
10. Are there any other weapons designed using lightsaber technology?
11. What powers does Galadriel have?
12. Who knows the truth about Jon Snow's parentage (father & mother)
13. Are there non-weapon items in the Star Wars universe based on lightsaber technology?
14. What five creatures were sacrificed in Barb & J.C. Hendee's Sister of the Dead?
15. Dresden Files, TV show vs Books
16. How many alien women has Capt/Admiral Kirk slept with?
17. https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/33762/what-are-the-nerdiest-movies-of-all-time

If I missed any, feel free to add them, but for now I'm going to call this our data set.

So: If we were to do totally away with lists, how would that affect the questions in this data set? How many fail the idle curiosity test? What other commonalities can we find?

Q1 : We have a lot of scope dancing, the OP spends more time limiting his question than asking it. We have a good answer, that's up-voted and we have a couple of also rans in the answer column. The OP admits its an idle question in the first sentence. It could have been phrased as a non-list question and still gotten the same response. Very few comments. Viewed 524.

Q2 : Again, huge effort limiting scope. Post improperly reopened by moderator instead of the normal five votes required. Few up-votes. One answer which may or may not be complete. 44 comments between the question and answer, plus however Keen deleted during version control. Again, sparked by another question, although not explicitly stated IC. Viewed 209.

Q3 : A perfect list question, concrete scope. Great answer and an additional answer. Only flaw is that it's an exact duplication of somebody else's content, although it is proper accredited. (It also must have been a stone cold bitch to make that table) Viewed 378.

Q4 : An example of the just-give-one-example question. Low votes, no answers (because the answer is "of course not" and everybody knows noes are a waste of your time.) Viewed 98.

Q5 : In which I erroneously edited the question and thus got reminded to make this post. Few comments, no answer. As originally worded, a ton of correct answers. Didn't have much of a chance to build up comment steam. Viewed 67.

Q6: Once again, lots of limiting of scope. One answer that is poorly researched and admitted to be incomplete. Low votes on question as well. Few comments. I won't make any guesses about OP's motivation. Viewed 223.

Q7 : No artificial scope limiting. No answers. A few comments. Low votes on question. Viewed 78.

Q8 : Scope limited by answerer to TOS, however it is another one example question, in which there could multiple correct answers. Answer could be straight copypasta from a wiki, who knows. Viewed 334.

Q9 : Here we have a question in which is phrased poorly, but where the OP wouldn't be helped by a list at all. He asks for one, but really wants an explanation on how a wolf gets to be in charge in Twilight. Viewed 151.

Q10 : Another fine example of the one example genre. Few comments. Couple of answers. Again, answer sourced directly from a wiki. Viewed 413.

Q11 : Asked like a list question, gets two good answers instead. This may not belong in this data set, but I added it as an edge case to be on the safe side. Viewed 839.

Q12 : Straight up list question in which we get one great answer and two other normal list responses. The great answer goes far above the OP's request, however. Viewed 451.

Q13 : High voted question, answers fall into the no trap. Also a one example question. Viewed 739.

Q14 : Great, well-sourced question; great, well-sourced answer. If every list question was like this one, I wouldn't have spent my day on this post. Viewed 66.

Q15 : List question, answered comprehensively. i.e. The kind of list question that could have been reformulated to get the same answer. Viewed 141.

Q16 : High voted question, also on the edge of the dataset. Sadly, answer is mostly copypasta of somebody else's work. Plus side, it is complete copypasta and it is nicely formated and the answerer did add a few outside sources in. Call it a wash. Viewed 378.

Q17 : The outside bound the other way, something everybody can see as unwanted content.

So... conclusions. There is a subset of these list questions that the community is already not voting up. I think the correlation is the idle curiosity metric. List questions also seem to invite a lot of copying from other sites. The gimme-one-example questions are really bad and should probably get nuked from orbit. I think that the restriction on list questions should probably be tightened to remove the subset that the community is already mostly ignoring

Answer 3

It could make sense to allow list questions, but make them CW and build the list inside one answer. This would remove the problem of an increasing amount of answers and allow the OP to accept the single correct answer, if they're satisfied.

List questions are easily identified so it would be trivial to enforce the rule. This is a compromise between banning them altogether and allowing non-constructive questions.

Answer 4

1. Barring a very specific and wide analysis of a majority of such "limited list" questions (and not just 2 that you cherry-picked to make your point) clearly showing that they actively harm the site, generate bad content, and are worth banning - the burden of proof that such questions are worth banning is on you.

   So far, you have not provided even a shred of proof aside from your own opinion that for all of them, "one person could not reasonably be expected to answer the question".

   Well, you are wrong to make such an assumption. Proof: I asked such a question (list of content of poetry in LOTR) -... and an expert rose to the occasion and DID answer it, exhaustively.

2. Also, as @JohnO noted, SFF.SE is not StackOverflow. We are here to indulge in our curiosities to know more about the fictional universes we like. "I am curious about X" is a perfectly sufficient justification for asking a question. YOU personally may not take anything out of that question or its answer, other people will. "Not useful for me" is NOT a criteria to ban specific kinds of questions (and if it is, let's start by banning "guessing game", aka "story-identification" ones since they aren't useful to some of us).

3. To answer your questions:

   "Are they generating good content?".

   Yes. See my example of poetry in LOTR question.

   Also "Are these questions the best use of this community's time?"

   Totally and completely irrelevant.

   • If you as a member of the community don't find such questions rewarding to answer or read others' answers - ignore them.

   • If you are miffed that specific experts in the community spend their time answering such questions instead of "better" ones, feel free to use bounties to incentivize those experts to answer the questions you like better.

   • If such questions present a clear and present danger to the site in that they are crowding out better content - prove it. Such questions are tiny minority of questions on the site, and not the most highly voted either (unlike joke lists on SO).

Answer 5

We are purely a "curiosity" site. There are no "problems" to be solved, this isn't superuser or stackoverflow.

If anything, we need to reconsider allowing all list questions once again, after crafting a policy that would make them as un-obnoxious as possible. For instance, some say that it messes up the popularity of other worthy questions, but I'd be happy if some technical fix were implemented to keep them from dominating the active sorting order or what have you.

Finally, I want to point out that if I've guessed which question inspired this meta post, it's not really a "list" question, so much as it is a "please give me an example of" question. The two are different both in intent and acceptable answers. While I am for list questions, I disapprove of give-me-an-example-ofs.