3

I'm a pretty big moviephile. I've got over 2,000 DVDs/Blu-Rays in my collection, plus another couple hundred laserdiscs and VHS tapes (yeah, some are dupes or alternate versions...) and I can usually identify a movie based on description. I'm relatively new here, and after reading through a few questions it often comes out after a few guesses that the movie in question is some obscure German or French film. Admittantly, I don't own a single "foreign film" (aside from Kaiju); I'm based in the U.S.

I'm just thinking that if there was a required text box on the question form that identifies the country of origin, it would make things a lot easier, and it would cut down on the wild guesses that are often thrown around.

2
  • 2
    In ID question, we are already using tags like bollywood, french, japneese etc to identify countries. But the problem is that sometime user doesn't know if the film is US based or UK based, then forcing him to chose a country not going to help.
    – Ankit Sharma Mod
    Mar 12, 2014 at 13:41
  • 2
    I've added a country of origin "field" in the help. Since we don't have a template for questions, this is about the best I can do.
    – iandotkelly Mod
    Mar 13, 2014 at 17:06

1 Answer 1

2

The problem is that sometimes the posters just don't know and other times they just forget to mention.

Of course many ID questions could be made a lot easier and better if each and every asker would mention each and every detail he remembers about and this is in turn encouraged for identify questions (and more often than not enquired by further comments if not mentioned). But unfortunately it is entirely up to the asker to write a proper question and there is IMHO no proper automatic way to make the asker write down everything he remembers other than asking guidelines.

Yet I also think that most often when people are explicitly searching for a "foreign" movie (and know this), they also mention it, since English-language movies still have a special meaning to most posters (be it by cultural background, prevalence in cinema/TV, site language, ...). So I think the country of origin is less of a problem than other details of ID-questions (or their general quality for that matter) and if not mentioned, one can often safely assume an at least English-language movie (yet asking in a comment if not mentioned at all would be the safest bet).

But I agree that it should at least be added into the "identify-guidelines" in the help section and would encourage the moderator(s) to do so.


In the end this comes down to the general requirement to write "good questions", which is unfortunately not clearly definable nor enforcable other than by further comments and refinements of the question (as is IMHO especially a problem with ID-questions as those seem to appeal to unregistered one-time-and-never-again visitors more than any other question type, but this might be just my subjective impression ;-)).

2
  • I've added it to the guidelines in the help - thanks for the suggestion.
    – iandotkelly Mod
    Mar 13, 2014 at 17:05
  • I think your first line pretty much sums it all up perfectly. It is incredible how many people post identify questions here and simply label a film as foreign. Having said that, given the fact most can be more specific if prompted, it's not THAT big a deal. Adding it to the guidelines sounds more than sufficient. Mar 13, 2014 at 20:53

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .