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How many times have you seen a "Country, age and language?" comment to an identify-this-thingy question? I'll bet it's every single damn time, or as close as makes no differences.

Would it at all be possible to have a little message popup and remind users of this when asking a question in one of those tags? Something like this:

Image of the reminder

A similar system exists for the titles, I got the system to generate the warning message by typing "Do you think I'm sexy?" as the question title, so presumably you could make it recognise "identify-this-" in the tags section and tell the users to include those pieces of information.

If for some reason you can't see the image, the reminder says:

Please include the approximate year, country of origin and language for the movie or TV show you are searching for

I know it's mentioned on the On-topic page, but let's be honest, nobody seems to read it.

EDIT: There seems to be a problem. When I tried to edit this question, the reminder popped up and refused to let me save my edit. ("Your edit couldn't be submitted. Please see the error above.") Does anyone know how to solve this bug?

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    Interesting idea, but I would make the message a little more voluntary by including a little "...if known" at the end, since there are somtimes cases where people just don't know that and might feel obliged to write something (or not ask the question at all, for better or worse). But afterall, one could maybe even include a more general "please be as detailed as possible" as well (since it's often not only the meta info that's lacking), but that might sound a bit too hand-holding.
    – Napoleon Wilson Mod
    Sep 18, 2014 at 9:52
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    Then the only problem left are the people forgetting the proper tag in the first place, but that's an entirely different question (and fortunately rarer than the problem of this question).
    – Napoleon Wilson Mod
    Sep 18, 2014 at 9:56
  • I'm leaving this for a SE team member to look at - I don't think there's anything like this in the SE platform, so I doubt they'd do it for us alone. We could add it to the tag wiki though.
    – iandotkelly Mod
    Sep 22, 2014 at 19:41
  • Tag wiki is the way to go for something like this.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Sep 23, 2014 at 14:53
  • @RobertCartaino The tag wiki contains a lot of suggestions which people don't follow (admittedly not those I mentioned), I don't think most users are reading anything before they ask their questions (as you can see from 183 views to 1,286 questions) and as NapoleanWilson correctly said, a lot of people don't even use the tag.
    – Crow T Robot
    Sep 23, 2014 at 14:58
  • @CrowTRobot If people don't use the tag (and if they don't read the guidance when they do use the tag), how is this feature-request intended to help?
    – Robert Cartaino
    Sep 23, 2014 at 15:00
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    @RobertCartaino There's nothing that can be done about people not using the tag, but for those that do, the information will be presented on the screen in an eye catching manner rather than on a wiki article which barely anyone reads.
    – Crow T Robot
    Sep 23, 2014 at 15:04
  • As for other solutions, I had the crazy idea of a separate\custom form for ID questions with things like "YEAR:" & "LANGUAGE:" already in place, but I'm guessing that would be too drastic (and hard to create\implement)?
    – Walt
    Oct 4, 2014 at 9:03
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    In fact this has recently been enabled for a specific tag on a specific site and as a general SE framework feature. Though, I don't know in which way this is already customizable per site/tag, yet, I guess it's just a test. But if this goes through and becomes fully customizable, then it's exactly what you're looking for.
    – Napoleon Wilson Mod
    Oct 21, 2014 at 11:05
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    @iandotkelly Why did you make this status-declined? The necessary SE-feature is already on its way and until then it rather seems undecided. Or did you genuinely decline this idea in general?
    – Napoleon Wilson Mod
    Oct 23, 2014 at 8:03
  • @NapoleonWilson - I do not have the power to decline feature requests, but I wanted to indicate that at present this feature is not going to be enabled here, rather than leave this just hanging as an unanswered request. Has this been enabled as a general SE framework feature, or are they experimenting with the idea? It seems to me that it is a trial on SO only for only one tag. Robert Cartaino's advice seems to be the only definitive response for this site for now
    – iandotkelly Mod
    Oct 23, 2014 at 12:10
  • @iandotkelly Sure, it's just a test run on another site for now, but marking it status-decline might be a bit definite for what could actually be implemented in the future and was not explicitly declined by the SE team as a terrible idea. Rather than that an open or even unanswered question seems more like it might still be an option. When I repost this request in a year, who guarantees it won't get closed as duplicate of this already declined request, even thought at that point it might easily be possible. But afterall it's entirely your decision how you handle those tags anyway.
    – Napoleon Wilson Mod
    Oct 23, 2014 at 12:17
  • @NapoleonWilson - I have made the status more clear in an answer.
    – iandotkelly Mod
    Oct 23, 2014 at 12:28

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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This is being trialled on Stack Overflow for the SQL Tag, and was requested for this as well. This is how it appears when the tag is added to a new question:

Given this links to the tag wiki, the best we can do here is to keep the Tag Wiki up to date and refer new people asking identification questions there.

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    How is this controllable? Since it obviously also has to be done for identify-this-tv-show.
    – Napoleon Wilson Mod
    Oct 24, 2014 at 20:23
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    Suggestion for a slight tweak: "-Language\Country of origin -Genre -Approximate year of release" [seeing that language and country are sometimes related and that genre is important and sometimes left out]. What do you think?
    – Walt
    Oct 24, 2014 at 20:52
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    @Shog9 - hey thanks!
    – iandotkelly Mod
    Oct 24, 2014 at 20:54
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I made a request a while back (possibly one of my first posts here) to have at least Country be a required field. It can always be filled in with "Not Sure", but at the very least that information is pretty much paramount to answering a question. If the user chooses "Not Sure", a pop-up can be used to remind the user that even narrowing it down to a region could be a big help in getting an answer to their question.

As for age, that's usually a little less known. Most people know about when they saw the movie, but not when it was actually released (which could be a large disparity).

The language thing could be tricky, because the user may have been watching a dubbed movie with no subs.

However, a reminder for all 3 is definitely a good idea if it's not difficult to impliment.

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    I don't think "approximate year" is too much to ask. Even a wild guess or a wide range like 1920s-1940s would be enough for me. BTW, did anyone mention genre yet? Outside horror, people often neglect to mention the film's genre and it can be quite crucial.
    – Walt
    Oct 3, 2014 at 19:41

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