Improve and extend the automatic tag-popup for identification questions

Question

We currently have a feature in place that creates an automatic tag-popup whenever someone uses the identify-this-movie tag. This tag popup shows a message asking for providing as much details as possible in order to encourage askers to write good identification questions.

Don't forget to include:

• language
• country of origin
• approximate year of release

For more suggestions on writing a successful identification request, see: The identify-this-movie Tag Wiki

Though, this tag-popup still has quite some limitations (as also expressed previously already) and part of the ideas for improving the issues with identification questions was to improve this tag popup. Unfortunately this is only achievable with the help of an SE employee and for this we ought to make a proper feature request in the form of this meta post.

So this is a proposal for improving some parts of this tag-popup. Of course that's not going to be end-all of identification problems, but it's an improvement that doesn't hurt anyone either and is worth going for. I also know some of those improvements might not be doable that easily (the first 3 (4?) should be no problem, though), but I'll still try to gather them all here and let the SE team implement them as far as possible. In particular those improvements should be made (in order of decreasing severity and predicted ease of implementation):

1. Enable it for identify-this-tv-show too, since this tag is of the exact same use as identify-this-movie and requires the same aspects for being considered well-fleshed out. It might use a different message linking to the other tag wiki, but that's not even necessary, since the tag wikis say pretty much the same and the requirements are exactly equal.

2. The text might use some more elaboration, though, I've been told it should not be too long. But it could use more details and maybe some clarifications as to questions not sufficing the quality requirements being liable for closure. Based on suggestions from the MattD's answer and a look into the respective help center pages I tried to be as concise as possible while still being more elaborate than the current popup. I also tried to incorporate the ideas from the answer as well the suggestion to mention the possibility of closing a bit more. I also included advice on the question titles that are often rather sub-par:

   Please provide everything you remember in your question and try to be as detailed as possible:

   • Approximate year/decade of release
   • Language and country of origin
   • Plot details and specific scenes
   • Descriptions of characters and locations
   • Genre

   Also try to use a descriptive question title. You can always edit your question if you remember more later. Identification questions that don't meet our quality standards might get closed.

   For more suggestions on writing a successful identification request, see: The identify-this-movie Tag Wiki.

3. According to Mike's answer we should also install a similar popup for the identify-this-actor tag, which often leads to very sub-par questions, too. Based on his answer a sensible wording for that tag popup could be:

   Please provide enough detail about the film or TV-show that this actor appeared on, in addition to any other details that may help identification. Questions that only present an image found on the internet without enough detail about the film it is from or even without being sure that it is an actor at all are likely to get closed.

   For more suggestions on writing a successful identification request, see: The identify-this-actor Tag Wiki.

4. Make it a slightly more noticeable/alarming color, maybe red as in the original proposal.

5. Position it a bit closer to the actual tag, as proposed here already, so it's not at the far right but more clearly visible.
6. At the moment it only shows when the tag edit box loses focus. But since in a normal asking workflow this happens right before clicking the "Post Your Question" button, it might not actually be shown at all. Either let it show up sooner (i.e. once the tag has been entered completely or was clicked in the selection box) or make a click on the "Post" button first show the popup (if it isn't already there) and only then post the question on a second click.

(Though, the last 2 (3?) might actually be dependent on the larger framework and thus require bigger feature requests on the main meta.)

Just give your votes on this feature-request depending if you agree with it or not and let us know in the answers if there's anything to add or change. Once this request has gathered sufficient traction, I'll ask the SE übermods to take a look at it (unless it has been downvoted to hell, of course).

Answer 1

While we're at the task of cleaning up the identify tags (as much as possible) it might be worth also trying to improve identify-this-actor. It's not nearly the crisis that identify-this-movie is, but as you mentioned, there's no harm in improving the tag guidance.

In particular, bad actor-ID questions tend to be of the form "here's a screen cap, who is this?". It might be useful to call out that these questions will be summarily closed -- we need to have some information about the movie and/or actor that's being identified.

Answer 2

I think it should be enhanced a bit to something like:

Don't forget to include the following in your question:

• The original language of the film (English, French, Spanish, etc.)
• The country of origin
• The approximate year or a concise range of years of release.

Remember: you can edit your own questions to add any additional details that could help in identifying the movie or TV show you're looking for.

For more suggestions on writing a successful identification request, see: The identify-this-movie Tag Wiki

I feel it's important to note that these should be added in the question, as a new user might thing they need to add these as tags given the popup is extending from the tag input box.

Further, most users tend to reply with comments to add these details rather than editing their original question with additional details whenever they're asked for more details, or simply remember them. Providing them with a simple reminder that they can always edit their own posts could go a long way in, "Please add these details to your post," comments.

The word concise could be swapped with "a short range" or something to make it a bit easier to understand for users who don't speak English as their native language. Emphasis on the "in your question" part could also be added, if possible.

I don't feel this makes the notification too long, and goes a bit further to helping new and inexperienced users to write appropriate questions when they're looking to ID a movie or TV show. Making it red cold work, but red is also associated with errors and bad things happening.

Answer 3

If this change requires actual development effort by a Stack Exchange developer, can it go even further?

I don't know if this is possible, but can we automatically add text to the user's question box if they select either the identify-this-movie or identify-this-tv-show. For example, if either tag is selected, could we automatically add something like tthe following to the bottom of the user's question:

Please enter all the following if known:
Year:
Language:
Approx year:
Black & white or colour:
Genre:

They don't have to be mandatory and they might even repeat some information the user has already included in their question. But it would be a very in-your-face way of highlighting the importance of including this information, particularly given the amount of questions that are posted without the information, the user is prompted for it, then they include it.

What do people think? Or is this too intrusive and/or too complex to add to the code?

Regardless of the answer, thanks to @Napoleon for asking this Meta question and trying to drive some sort of change to improve the quality of the questions asked.