concerns about the rules of these sites conflicting with the goals of this particular one

Question

I see a lot of 'spoiler' questions on this site.

"Who kills this guy in this film?"

"How many times does this happen in this film? etc etc."

The reason I joined this public beta is because, like many of you, I have a love for movies.

Here is an example question that I would love to ask:

"Who are the cinematographers that you would regard as seminal, and why? and regarding this, what are some classic films that I should watch to see their work?"

Now this question would not be allowed, because it is subjective. However it seems like this would be a GREAT place to ask it. Where else is there such a well structured site with such a great and knowledgeable fan base?

So my question is, will these kinds of questions be allowed? Or is this just going to be a site dedicated to movie trivia?

I'd love to be able to look at questions like this and see a big list of films to watch that people have talked about and decided on. A bit like this question:

http://www.tinyurl.com/so-cxxbooks

EDIT - I propose we allow kind of list question on the site. I for one would love to be able to look up a question which tells me what the best anime films to watch if I've never seen any before, or for music, or some quintessential noir films, zombie films, romantic films etc.

I would also add that disallowing subjective answers on a site dedicated to an artform - which is inherently subjective, does not make sense.

The rule for non-subjective questions came from these sites being initially set up for technical topics (like stack overflow) where it is essential to provide factual, canonical answers.

Answer 1

Why are questions like these not normally allowed?

Because it's a pain to clean up when everyone had their fun with it. It's that simple really.

In that C++ question you linked, users are aggressively editing that question. You just don't notice it. Those 41 answers you see might actually be 41 visible answers and 50 deleted ones for all intents and purposes.

Currently there is someone still cleaning up the https://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books question.

Also that list is not all C++ books, it is the definite C++ list. One in which the community agrees on.

Now another user somewhere else already complained about trivia. Since trivia is about basic foundation of movies here then maybe some too basic barrier should be employed to step up the non-trivial nature of questions.

Think about it for a second. It's a Q&A site. You give a question. I give you an objective answer. This is not a discussion forum.

Who are the cinematographers that you would regard as seminal, and why? and regarding this, what are some classic films that I should watch to see their work?"

With this we can impart Programmers Six principles of subjective

• inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.
• tend to have long, not short, answers.
• have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.
• invite sharing experiences over opinions.
• insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.
• are more than just mindless social fun.

For one your question is way too broad.

Who are the cinematographers that you would regard as seminal

A. We have moved in one direction here. With n different answers

and why?

We now have n different variations of each A. type answers

and regarding this, what are some classic films that I should watch to see their work?

Now we are up another layer to the type of answers that come in.

Is there anything wrong with this? Not really sure, you may need to be checking Literature and Science Fiction sites instead of comparing it to StackOverflow.

You see, this is why we are in private beta so that we can experiment and broaden/tighten the scope to something we can all agree on.

Convince the community that these type of questions bring across constructive answers and then you got my vote at least.

How do you do that? Ask questions on the main site

See http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/ for more info.

Answer 2

The question, as currently stated, is way too broad, it's the same equivalent of asking who the most influential book authors are and what should I read to get a good sample of their work? I could see this working, maybe, on literature if it was written “Who are the most influential sci-fi authors and what works highlight this influence?”

Answer 3

I think those question are very interesting and get some great discussions. I would also like to ask people for recommendations, but at the end of the day this is a question and answer site and those answers are too subjective and are better suited to chat or a movie forum.

Also, you can't really accept an answer that is always true. Maybe you accept Fred's answer of 3 movies but then the next month I come back with a list that totally blows Fred's out of the water.