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Should Questions on List of Movies be allowed ? Like for Example

  • List of movies with star crossed lovers
  • List of movies with Disease as the main theme.
  • Movies That have only 2 characters
  • List of indie movies on relationships

and so on.

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Many list questions may solicit opinions, but that's not the reason list questions are bad. List questions are bad because they don't fit a question/answer format well. A list question is one that solicits multiple correct answers, rather than a single correct answer. When there are multiple correct answers, it's impossible to select the correct answer; and SE is all about finding good, correct answers to expert-level questions. If we allow questions that cannot have correct answers, it's not fulfilling the goal of the SE network.

List questions are considered off-topic on every other SE site (as far as I know), and should be off-topic here, as well.

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List questions almost always are soliciting opinions, or asking for shopping advice. They're off-topic for being not constructive.

However, questions asking for lists may be on-topic. These are questions where there is a single correct list that can be contained in a single answer. An example is, "List of scenes in this movie?" (assuming question isn't general reference)

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  • If List of scenes in this movie can be allowed , Then as per your argument , There may be some list questions with a short number of items on the list , Then they may also be allowed also because they can be contained in a single answer.
    – Gautam
    Dec 19, 2011 at 1:06
  • @GautamK That would require dedicated moderation per question to make sure users are following the format.
    – phwd
    Dec 19, 2011 at 1:08
  • So in general they are disallowed , But there may be exceptions
    – Gautam
    Dec 19, 2011 at 1:14
  • well according to your answer this should not be closed movies.stackexchange.com/questions/27512/… as the list I was requiring is a fixed list of shows and movies that is not opinion based and with only possible answer
    – John Demetriou
    Nov 26, 2014 at 10:03
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Short answer: NO!

Long answer: List questions generate very little meaningful content to the network, and are generally a pain to get much info out of. It’s hard to get a good answer to a question if you have to read through 10+ answers. Another inherent issue is time. List questions are usually open to time, so people will fly by and add the new hotness, making it that much longer.

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Simple answer: No, they have no value.

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I think you would just have to have moderation to differentiate between

"List of directors who put numbers in their movies (http://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/821/are-there-any-other-directors-other-than-george-lucas-that-have-a-specific-num/824#824)" (I realize this isn't a list of movies question, but it's in the same vein, I was trying to find a specific example)

and

"List your top three Sidney Lumet movies"

I think there are a lot of movie questions (see the link above) that implicity ask for lists without asking directly. A lot of questions can be answered with lists. Banning list questions altogether seems ill-advised.

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I guess if anybody feels like getting a list based on a property or want to know "If there is a movie where X is shown", we might want to just ask him to join in a friendly chat to discuss about this. I think chat can give the answer in the best possible way!

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