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Thank you for your question.

I think that you have a valid point questioning the application of the 'trivial' rule when being applied to a post. Speaking personally, I saw your question and it did not occur to me to close it as trivial but one of the hard things about being a moderator is that you often have to make judgement in isolation and we don't all have the same opinion.

That said I think that it is a big stretch to say that this means that the FAQ is unclear or that somehow the fact that we allow identification questions is a deep flaw in the site - just because you can twist any question to be an identification question somehow.

However I do think that it is perhaps a good time to revisit some of the groundrules of the site and the trivia issue is a good example. We clearly don't want to see questions like:

• Who starred in Movie X
• What year did Movie Y appear
• When did Actress X get her Oscar

The 'banal trivia' line in the FAQ came about from almost day 1 of the private beta when the groundrules were being drawn up:

whats-trivia-and-where-do-we-draw-the-line

is-this-question-on-wedding-crashers-trivia

To sum it up, Robert Cartaino (guiding the early development of the site) suggests that a trivial question can be tested by asking "Does this question help my understanding or appreciation for the film (beyond idle curiosity)?". Unfortunately for you, I think that applying this test to your question, the answer is probably no - and therefore by this metric DFork42 was correct in closing your question.

Personally I think this provides a slightly narrow film-aficionado approach to the site. In another answer to the above questions, Gilles (a moderator on SciFi and Fantasty) tries to distinguish between interesting and non-interesting trivia, and suggests that the voting mechanism be used to determine that. This tends to be more my approach with such questions - if it is truly trivial to find the answer elsewhere (i.e. something easily found on IMDB) then I will close it - if not I allow the community to say whether it is interesting or not and leave it open.

I am not going to reverse DFork42's closing just because I personally would not have closed it. It would however be interesting to see other user comments on whether they want to see this or a more lax approach to closing trivia be applied.

Thank you for your question.

I think that you have a valid point questioning the application of the 'trivial' rule when being applied to a post. Speaking personally, I saw your question and it did not occur to me to close it as trivial but one of the hard things about being a moderator is that you often have to make judgement in isolation and we don't all have the same opinion.

That said I think that it is a big stretch to say that this means that the FAQ is unclear or that somehow the fact that we allow identification questions is a deep flaw in the site - just because you can twist any question to be an identification question somehow.

However I do think that it is perhaps a good time to revisit some of the groundrules of the site and the trivia issue is a good example. We clearly don't want to see questions like:

• Who starred in Movie X
• What year did Movie Y appear
• When did Actress X get her Oscar

The 'banal trivia' line in the FAQ came about from almost day 1 of the private beta when the groundrules were being drawn up:

whats-trivia-and-where-do-we-draw-the-line

is-this-question-on-wedding-crashers-trivia

To sum it up, Robert Cartaino (guiding the early development of the site) suggests that a trivial question can be tested by asking "Does this question help my understanding or appreciation for the film (beyond idle curiosity)?". Unfortunately for you, I think that applying this test to your question, the answer is probably no - and therefore by this metric DFork42 was correct in closing your question.

Personally I think this provides a slightly narrow film-aficionado approach to the site. In another answer to the above questions, Gilles (a moderator on SciFi and Fantasty) tries to distinguish between interesting and non-interesting trivia, and suggests that the voting mechanism be used to determine that. This tends to be more my approach with such questions - if it is truly trivial to find the answer elsewhere (i.e. something easily found on IMDB) then I will close it - if not I allow the community to say whether it is interesting or not and leave it open.

I am not going to reverse DFork42's closing just because I personally would not have closed it. It would however be interesting to see other user comments on whether they want to see this or a more lax approach to closing trivia be applied.

Thank you for your question.

Personally I think that you have a valid point about the application of the 'trivial' rule when being applied to a post. Speaking personally, I saw your question and it did not occur to me to close it as trivial but one of the hard things about being a moderator is that you often have to make judgement in isolation and we don't all have the same opinion.

That said I think that it is a big stretch to say that this means that the FAQ is unclear or that somehow the fact that we allow identification questions is a deep flaw in the site - just because you can twist any question to be an identification question somehow.

However I do think that it is perhaps a good time to revisit some of the groundrules of the site and the trivia issue is a good example. We clearly don't want to see questions like:

• Who starred in Movie X
• What year did Movie Y appear
• When did Actress X get her Oscar

The 'banal trivia' line in the FAQ came about from almost day 1 of the private beta when the groundrules were being drawn up:

whats-trivia-and-where-do-we-draw-the-line

is-this-question-on-wedding-crashers-trivia

To sum it up, Robert Cartaino (guiding the early development of the site) suggests that a trivial question can be tested by asking "Does this question help my understanding or appreciation for the film (beyond idle curiosity)?". Unfortunately for you, I think that applying this test to your question, the answer is probably no - and therefore by this metric DFork42 was correct in closing your question.

Personally I think this provides a slightly narrow film-aficionado approach to the site. In another answer to the above questions, Gilles (a moderator on SciFi and Fantasty) tries to distinguish between interesting and non-interesting trivia, and suggests that the voting mechanism be used to determine that. This tends to be more my approach with such questions - if it is truly trivial to find the answer elsewhere (i.e. something easily found on IMDB) then I will close it - if not I allow the community to say whether it is interesting or not and leave it open.

I am not going to reverse DFork42's closing just because I personally would not have closed it. It would however be interesting to see other user comments on whether they want to see this or a more lax approach to closing trivia be applied.

Thank you for your question.

I think that you have a valid point questioning the application of the 'trivial' rule when being applied to a post. Speaking personally, I saw your question and it did not occur to me to close it as trivial but one of the hard things about being a moderator is that you often have to make judgement in isolation and we don't all have the same opinion.

That said I think that it is a big stretch to say that this means that the FAQ is unclear or that somehow the fact that we allow identification questions is a deep flaw in the site - just because you can twist any question to be an identification question somehow.

However I do think that it is perhaps a good time to revisit some of the groundrules of the site and the trivia issue is a good example. We clearly don't want to see questions like:

• Who starred in Movie X
• What year did Movie Y appear
• When did Actress X get her Oscar

The 'banal trivia' line in the FAQ came about from almost day 1 of the private beta when the groundrules were being drawn up:

whats-trivia-and-where-do-we-draw-the-line

is-this-question-on-wedding-crashers-trivia

To sum it up, Robert Cartaino (guiding the early development of the site) suggests that a trivial question can be tested by asking "Does this question help my understanding or appreciation for the film (beyond idle curiosity)?". Unfortunately for you, I think that applying this test to your question, the answer is probably no - and therefore by this metric DFork42 was correct in closing your question.

Personally I think this provides a slightly narrow film-aficionado approach to the site. In another answer to the above questions, Gilles (a moderator on SciFi and Fantasty) tries to distinguish between interesting and non-interesting trivia, and suggests that the voting mechanism be used to determine that. This tends to be more my approach with such questions - if it is truly trivial to find the answer elsewhere (i.e. something easily found on IMDB) then I will close it - if not I allow the community to say whether it is interesting or not and leave it open.

I am not going to reverse DFork42's closing just because I personally would not have closed it. It would however be interesting to see other user comments on whether they want to see this or a more lax approach to closing trivia be applied.