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I know there was one related question, Should we allow sports trivia? and the most upvoted answer reads:

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.

This question Who was the youngest winner of Gagarin Cup? reads like a trivia question, however, it will take far more time and effort than a click or two to find an answer. If we allow this kind of question, I am afraid Sports SE will become a Gooling service for users who don't want to spend their own time in finding the answer themselves. The amount of time spent for the answer will be almost same for any user.

I think we should revisit this issue as four and a half years have passed since the last related question was asked. I don't see any prospect of Sports SE graduating from beta soon (maybe never) and I think keeping the quality of a question should have higher priority. Well, I don't think there are many questions to ask here, either.

What are your thoughts?

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  • Perhaps number of views can be a rough approximation saying to which extent is a question interesting/useful for people other than the OP, And it also gives insight into how much traffic they generate (which might be relevant for a site which struggles to attract users). Current stats - as afar as I can say - seem like this: 10k+ views: 9 trivia questions out of [total 155 questions], 2,5k+ views: 33/481, 1k+ views: 63/870.
    – Martin
    Commented Oct 22, 2016 at 16:39
  • The part about "total 155 questions" in the previous comment was supposed to link here: sports.stackexchange.com/help/badges/28/famous-question
    – Martin
    Commented Oct 22, 2016 at 16:46
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    You object to the question because it takes actual effort to answer? That's what this site is all about!
    – Michael Myers Mod
    Commented Oct 22, 2016 at 18:49
  • @MichaelMyers Nope. Not at all. I object to the question because the OP can find the answer himself. If the OP can't find the answer, nobody will be able to find it.
    – user10632
    Commented Oct 22, 2016 at 18:50
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    That is also true of all rules questions, and most questions on Stack Overflow, etc. Being researchable isn't a negative in my opinion.
    – Michael Myers Mod
    Commented Oct 22, 2016 at 18:54
  • @MichaelMyers Well, there is a fine line, I agree. Do you even know what Gagarin Cup is? Do you care about which team won it and who was the youngest player in the team? Oh my God. There should be a clear line. Who was the youngest player in the 2012 Olympics? Who was the youngest player in the last World Cup? Who was the youngest player in the LA Olympics? Come on.
    – user10632
    Commented Oct 22, 2016 at 18:56
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    I think that's what voting is for. The tooltip for the downvote button says "This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful". If you think it is not useful, hit that button!
    – Michael Myers Mod
    Commented Oct 22, 2016 at 18:59
  • @MichaelMyers Nope. The question is general reference and too broad. If you think you can accept those trivia questions, please post your answer. I am sick and tired of those questions on various SE sites and I just want to close and delete them.
    – user10632
    Commented Oct 22, 2016 at 19:01
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    There is a clear dichotomy between a research request and a trivia question. A research request is justified through little effort from the OP. A trivia question "goes beyond general reference." It has already been stated that "If you haven't found it yourself [...] then it's probably not findable by anyone on this site" is a misestimation.
    – user527
    Commented Oct 23, 2016 at 2:53

2 Answers 2

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My take:

  • Personally, I'm not too interested in these trivia style questions.
  • However, there is clearly an interest in them from our community of users.
  • Stack Exchange communities do in general have a fairly large amount of discretion in order to define what is "on topic" for their community, even if the same sort of question would be off-topic on a "typical" Stack Exchange site - Software Recommendations is probably the canonical example here.
  • I don't actually see trivia questions as generating a problem for the community, in the sense that I don't believe they're attracting lots of spam type answers which we need to clean up or the like. Equally, we're not overloaded with trivia questions pushing every other question off the front page before people have a chance to see them.

I do understand the concern that these questions are often answerable from resources already available on the web, but I don't think that's necessarily a reason to rule them out. For example, a large proportion of baseball stats questions are answerable from Baseball Reference's database, but the person asking the question may not have the tech skills necessary to be able to extract that data from the database, but there are people in the community which do have those skills. If it's a question which shows a lack of research, it can always been downvoted.

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  • +1 for "it's not my thing, but other people like it, so there's no problem if there's no problem".
    – Nij Mod
    Commented Oct 24, 2016 at 12:36
  • Thanks for the answer. How about one question per post policy?. The problem I see is another user will ask "Who is the oldest player in Gagarin Cup?" and "Who were the players in their 30's in Gagarin Cup?" "Who was the youngest player who scored a goal in Gagarin Cup?". They will use this question as an example. One more thing. What does Sports SE have to lose if we don't welcome this type of question? I don't see anything that it loses. Actually, it will attract this kind of question more down the road.
    – user10632
    Commented Oct 24, 2016 at 13:19
  • Baseball reference is not the same case. Yes, I don't know how to use Baseball Reference. But I know how to find the youngest player in Gagarin Cup. The OP knows how to find the youngest player in Gagarin Cup. That's my point. The OP and I will use the same technique, same search site, same references, will reach the same conclusion. The OP answered his question. That proves it. Who on earth cares about the youngest player in Gagarin Cup? How about Stanley Cup? How about World Cup? How about World Series? How about EUFA Championship finals?
    – user10632
    Commented Oct 24, 2016 at 13:21
  • @Rathony I'm not going to argue that the Gagarin Cup question is a great question. But one mediocre question doesn't means we should rule out trivia questions as a whole.
    – Philip Kendall Mod
    Commented Oct 25, 2016 at 8:33
  • @PhilipKendall OK. Let's agree to disagree. I think the consensus is just leave it alone. What am I supposed to do? I will leave it there. Thanks.
    – user10632
    Commented Oct 25, 2016 at 8:37
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These questions are interesting. I didn't know what the Gagarin Cup is (I could have made reasonable guesses, and they were close in this case) but now I do.

These questions are niche. The fact that it takes more than viewing the first page of Google is not a reasonable argument against them; in fact, it's a good reason to have them on Stack Exchange.

These questions represent a wider audience. If we shut down these questions because they're not something we're familiar with or that we personally dislike, we are telling a large proportion of people that we don't want them here. Stability of membership is not enough - we need growth in membership too.

If you don't like it, you don't have to see it. You can choose to not see questions in tags that you don't like.

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