Rules questions with "little" effort. Do we close these questions as off-topic or downvote?

Question

Lately, a perspective regarding the effort put into rules questions (eg, lack of research) and how to handle these questions have come into question.

Do we close these questions as off-topic or downvote? The help center suggests to "use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post."

---

First, What are the rules regarding player movement in a lineout.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because the asker gives no indication of performing basic checks on whether any rules apply, and adequate official resources are easily available that do so, to far greater depth than is possible on SE. Follow-up questions after reading the laws are preferable.

There is a valid counterpoint about allowing these questions based on previous, allowed, and well-received questions.

Nonetheless, this still received more than one close vote under the guise of "lack of research."

---

However, with this question, Ball goes through the strike zone, but the catcher doesn't catch the ball?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this is too easy to look up and OP did no research.

Response,

That's not a valid reason to close; a vote to close should not be used as a "super downvote".

---

Furthermore, with this question, How many matches will there be at Euro 2016, the following comment got 6 votes:

I vote to close because it is possible to find the answer with a very simple search on the web

Although the question is not closed, it was still received favorably with no rebuttal.

---

Thus, in two scenarios, lack of research is an appropriate reason to close and in the other scenario, lack of research is not an appropriate reason to close.

Answer 1

In general, we should leave questions of this type open.

As an American, I know a fair amount about American football, basketball, and baseball. I know less about soccer football, and almost nothing about cricket. If I were to watch a cricket match, I would have a lot of questions, many of which would be instantly answerable by many of the people on this site.

What's wrong with that? We are not overrun with questions here. Closing a question that is clear and answerable is the wrong thing to do, especially on this site when we could use all the questions we can get. We want to encourage participation on this site, not discourage it.

Remember, there are only five close reasons. If a question is not off-topic, not unclear, not a duplicate, not too broad, and not primarily opinion-based, it really should be left open. "Too easy" is not a close reason. We are trying to create a comprehensive question-and-answer database about sports. Why shouldn't we have a question about down markers?

If you think a question is too easy to waste your time answering, then don't. If you don't think a question is an asset to the site, but it doesn't match any of the close reasons, then downvote and move on. But you don't need to prevent others from taking the time to write a great answer and making the internet a better place. Then, when others do try to google the same question, they will land here. That would be a great thing for our site.

Having basic questions with great answers does not hurt our site at all, in my opinion. In fact, the stated goal of our website, as expressed on our Tour page, is this:

With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about sports.

^{(Emphasis mine)}

Just because the answer can be found elsewhere doesn't mean that we shouldn't also have the answer here.

Answer 2

Personally, I think they're both OK if not brilliant questions. They are both reasonably scoped, and do so some evidence of research, particularly the rugby one:

I understand that there needs to be minimum distance between the 2 lines and that there needs to be a minimum distance between the lines and the side line.

Even looking at the appropriate Law of Rugby, it's not entirely obvious to me what the answer is (i.e. I don't feel confident enough to answer it), and I know at least a little about rugby.

The baseball one perhaps isn't as good a question, but it's not necessarily something which is obvious to people who didn't grow up playing baseball: the whole "batter becomes a runner if a third strike isn't caught" thing is a fairly obscure bit of rules.

As such, I don't think that either should be closed, or even in fact downvoted.

Answer 3

There are several schools of thought regarding questions (in general) showing "little" effort or otherwise viewed as "low-quality." Here are some of the following perspectives:

• The question is too basic.
• Not everyone grew up with the sport.
• It is reasonable to expect users to have done their research before asking.
• People shouldn't rely on good google-fu to find something when we can provide it to them without any issue.

There is a respectable amount of correctness in each of these points. However, this has caused a blatant inconsistency on how questions showing "little" effort or otherwise viewed as "low-quality" are handled.

Until we can decide on a course of action, this will continue to be the case.

---

Exhibit A:

Do all the players on the bases get a run if the batter hits a home run or does only the batter who hit the home run get a run?

This question may be considered basic to those familiar with baseball. The most objective demonstration of any research was in the form of misconstruing terminology while watching a game.

A comment states: "...go easy on the downvotes. Not everybody grew up with baseball."

This was upvoted 7 times and protected the question from downvotes. There was even extra support toward this comment.

---

Exhibit B:

Ordinal Numbers on football field

Just like Exhibit A, this question may be considered basic to those familiar with American football. Also like Exhibit A, this question originated from a lack of understanding while watching a game. Moreover, it isn't clear whether Exhibit B demonstrated more or less research than Exhibit A.

I quoted the comment from Exhibit A as I didn't see how it didn't apply to Exhibit B. The responses ranged from "it is reasonable to expect users to have done their research before asking" to "a mod shouldn't encourage questions of this low quality." All the support found in Exhibit A was nowhere to be found in Exhibit B (until recently).

This question was closed with no support for it other than my quoted comment and defense of "the OP had an honest question". Update: The question has since been reopened.

Side note: I found it appalling how one user was welcomed so well in one question and so poorly in another question (of similar quality and working knowledge). Regardless, we shouldn't make a user feel unwelcome because of the quality of his/her question. We should help and guide the user to an answer, to improving the question, to learn how this site works, etc.

---

Exhibit C:

What does the third number in a NFL team's record stand for?

Like Exhibits A and B, this question may be considered basic to those familiar with American football. There definitely wasn't any demonstration of research done on this question.

There are close votes for "easily googled and too basic" but there was a response stating the question was useful as it may be confusing to football (soccer) fans and we "shouldn't rely on good google-fu to find something when we can provide it to them without any issue" as the first page of search results came from a source regarded as not credible.

Exhibit C seems to be in between Exhibits A and B with respect to how it was handled.

Answer 4

Where is the (let's call it) minimum required level of prior research into the query?

For me it is "I read the rules concerning my query" and "I've watched several videos/looked at several images featuring the focus of my query" leading to "but there is a nuance that I can't figure out".

Others apparently place the limit at "a Google search doesn't immediately give the answer" or even "we should answer the trivial ones as well" (though this seems to be idiosyncratic to the sport such persons like most).

Then, that is presuming such a level exists upon which a significant majority of the community can agree. Either

• we need to be able to say and effect, in totality, this is enough independent effort to asking on Sports.SE, while that is not enough independent effort to justify having it asked and answered here; or
• we leave it to people to decide their own threshold and vote accordingly, based on any amount and type of reasoning they find sufficient.