I thought about this after reading this question, which simply asked if anyone could identify a movie where two boys were riding a bike. That's all there was to the clues.
I know we've had serious debates and discussions about movie identification previously so I hope this isn't bordering as redundant, but since we're still allowing identification questions I decided to go ahead and risk asking.
So I was reading this question and I was asking myself, if I were this person (the OP), would I bother asking this question with the little info I have? What else could I try to think of that might help?
That got me thinking, what is a good set of minimum details that an identification question should have? So far I've seen easy ones
- B/W or color
- Language (English, ...)
- Time frame (when was the movie made)
- Identify/describe main character(s) (protagonist/antagonist)
- Identify type of movie (funny, sad, scary)
But really, even with this information and simply "there was a bike scene", that still doesn't equate to much.
Creating some kind of template to improve or prevent identification questions was the goal I imagined.
Looking at the stats for the site, we're lacking in questions per day and answers per question but we have a high answer rate and great traffic. I'd like to try and not dilute the good stats we have with poor quality questions that just can't be answered.