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Our faq says we are for "participants in team and individual sport activities". It doesn't clarify whether this is limited to questions by participants, or if it includes questions about participants.

Should we allow questions about sports trivia?

Edit: wax eagle brings up a good point - trivia needs to be defined first.

The dictionary definition is

especially obscure and useless knowledge

I would contend that our working definition could be (but is open to modification)

knowledge about a sport that has no significant impact on the performance of the sport

I think to address this we should weigh the pros and cons...

  • What are the pros to allowing trivia?

    • Wider question set attracts a wider audience
    • Many experts on rules and performance are also familiar with trivia

  • What are the cons to allowing trivia?

    • Questions on trivia may not be 'expert enough' for the site.

  • What are the pros to not allowing trivia?

    • There would be a finer focus on the scope of questions

  • What are the cons to not allowing trivia?

    • There currently is no stack exchange venue to handle such questions.

After looking at the matter objectively, I feel that the site would be better off as a whole with the trivia included. If it ends up being a significant portion of the site, perhaps it would then be most appropriate to split into a separate site. For now, it would seem a logical extension.

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  • What do you consider trivia?
    – wax eagle
    Commented Feb 9, 2012 at 3:19

3 Answers 3

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This site is (was?) intended to be inclusive of both fans and participants. Thus sports trivia should be allowed on the following conditions:

  • They allow for a factual answer (does not have to have a single answer, but it should be facts based)
  • They go beyond general reference. If you can get a great answer within a click or two of a Google search it probably isn't a great fit.

I'd much rather see us a bit light on trivia and heavier on academic or research aspects (how are stats calculated/determined etc). Trivia is sort of a shady issue with SE anyways so it will be a challenge to integrate it properly.

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I think trivia questions just don't fit in with the StackExchange Q&A model. Consider, for example:

Who is the all-time assists leader in the NBA?

This is not a question that promotes any kind of discussion, nor is there room for multiple answers to be upvoted or downvoted. Somebody answers:

John Stockton

And that's it. End of story. LMGTFY. What's the point? Maybe it changes in a few years? Again, LMGTFY. I just don't think trivia questions fit.

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  • 5
    But the StackExchange model is not supposed to promote discussion. The more objectively an answer can be answered, the BETTER it fits the model. The point is that there is lots of information that cannot be googled so easily, and that people don't necessarily know where to look.
    – corsiKa
    Commented Feb 10, 2012 at 16:52
  • Fair enough, less discussion is better. Still, I don't think a Q&A site is the same as a "trivia" site. What exactly constitutes "hard to Google sports trivia"?
    – Zann Anderson
    Commented Feb 10, 2012 at 16:55
  • Well, how about "Who is the NFL's all time solo sack leader?" I mean, how would someone go about trying to compile something like that?
    – corsiKa
    Commented Feb 10, 2012 at 17:19
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    Ok, I can see that. I just think that saying, "Trivia! Bring it on!" sets the bar pretty low. I'm afraid you'd be opening the door for lots of the kinds of questions I illustrated in my answer.
    – Zann Anderson
    Commented Feb 10, 2012 at 17:25
  • Many rules questions are the same way, though. All the rulebooks are available online. If we didn't allow trivia would we allow rule questions?
    – corsiKa
    Commented Feb 10, 2012 at 17:34
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    I don't know, I guess you get into splitting hairs when you get too deep into "what trivia/rule/____ questions are valid"? I just think trivia has its place and that this isn't it, but if that's not what everybody else feels then so be it - it's the community that counts here.
    – Zann Anderson
    Commented Feb 10, 2012 at 18:06
  • There's no hard feelings. I personally don't anticipate trivia questions being a huge portion of our question base. One thing worth noting is that this is meta: splitting hairs is what we do here. It's our responsibility as a community to define what we do and don't want, and why. Heck right now, we don't even have a goal for the site clearly defined. You could not, in one sentence, say what the goal of the site is. It's going to be... rough... for a little while until we get things sorted out. That's the primary reason for the week-long private beta, to get a head start on sorting it out.
    – corsiKa
    Commented Feb 10, 2012 at 18:16
  • I think "trivia" might be the wrong word here. The real question is what does expert Q&A for fans look like? Its pretty easy to determine what it looks like for participants in a sport. Figuring that out will solve a lot of this (I'd imagine its going to be stats definition heavy, and who broke x record light)
    – wax eagle
    Commented Feb 11, 2012 at 4:30
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Various close requests are showing that there is a lot of confusion about the site. 'participants in team and individual sport activities' suggests that this site should be more for participants in sporting rather than fans of pro-sports, and I think we should make that clear.

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  • 1
    What should we make clear though? That we are not allowing it? Or that we are allowing it? If we are allowing it, why are we allowing it? If we are not allowing it, why are we not allowing it? We need to pick one, and we need to justify why we picked that.
    – corsiKa
    Commented Feb 9, 2012 at 4:11
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    The purpose of the beta that we signed up for was not for pro-trivia, and if they want that they should make their own stack exchange site instead of confusing the purpose of this one.
    – Peter DeWeese
    Commented Feb 9, 2012 at 4:15
  • where is it stated that it wasn't for pro-trivia? I personally am okay with either answer, it doesn't bother me, but I would like the communities decision to be rooted in a fact, reference, or at the very least a logical justification.
    – corsiKa
    Commented Feb 9, 2012 at 4:20
  • Refrences: The area 51 proposal and our faq, which each state that the site is for participants.
    – Peter DeWeese
    Commented Feb 9, 2012 at 4:23
  • But it doesn't clarify if questions about participants of the sport is acceptable. It can easily be interpreted that way.
    – corsiKa
    Commented Feb 9, 2012 at 4:24
  • @PeterDeWeese the original Sports proposal was inclusive of pro sports triva and this site should remain as such.
    – wax eagle
    Commented Feb 9, 2012 at 12:39
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    My personal vote, coming to this community when the Running group was merged into the Sports group, is that this group would be for participants. And maybe it would be good to have a separate group for folks who like to watch football on TV, participate in fantasy versions, etc.
    – Mike Hedman
    Commented Feb 10, 2012 at 21:51
  • prosports.stackexchange.com
    – Peter DeWeese
    Commented Feb 10, 2012 at 22:38

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