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][1]) -... 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).



  [1]: http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/3492/in-the-lord-of-the-rings-what-important-background-information-is-contained-in