Which trivia questions are on-topic and which are off-topic?

Question

Recently I asked a trivia question about the oldest actors cast relative to their biopic subjects. This question was closed for being off-topic trivia.

This surprised me, as I've browsed this community for years and seen many, many similar trivia questions. Some examples are:

• Who was the oldest actor to portray a teenager?
• Of all the movies and TV shows ever made, which of them is set furthest in the future?
• What is the longest aired episode of a TV series?
• Where and when does the "idea" light bulb appear for the first time?
• What's the earliest example in comedy of someone reading out the prognosis as the patient quickly suffers them all one by one?
• What is the first animated cartoon?
• What is the first television show with a trans male lead?
• What was the first film project to have double directors?
• Is this the biggest age gap between romantic leads where the actress is the older?

None of these questions are closed. None are labeled off-topic. The last five examples are from the past year.

The help center is not helpful. It says that off-topic trivia is "Unimportant trivia that does not add to the understanding or appreciation of the title.", but I am struggling to understand why "the biggest age gap between romantic leads where the actress is older" passes this bar but "the biggest age gap between actor and subject where the actor is older" does not.

Answer 1

I'm going go to be controversial and state that I believe the trivia rule should be removed because it is extremely subjective and very hard to moderate.

It also lends itself to the 'unfriendly' mood that we have somewhat been accused of over the years.

However, I do expect this answer will be heavily downvoted and other opinions to the contrary expressed because generally, the community here support it.

I personally do my best to adhere to my understanding of the guidelines, but it is hard to express succinctly why your question was closed and why the other 'the biggest age gap' question survived. "First Appearance" questions however have more of a history of being accepted here, and many of your examples fall into that category.

Answer 2

I agree with iandotkelly's answer on removing the trivia rule and that the question you mentioned should not have been closed.

The trivia rule and close reason is too vague and subjective to be consistently applied, as already lamented years ago in these prior meta posts:

• Can we please redefine "trivia"? (2015) Question votes: +30/0 | Answer votes: +18/-4

I'd rather trivia of all sorts be allowed and instead we judge the question on quality. Granted, quality is subjective, but that's why we have votes.

• The term "trivia" is just lazy. Can't we do better? (2019) Question votes: +13/-2

[...] it's a poorly-defined category that we should be able to replace with more specific reasons. Can't we do better?

Part of the problem is that "trivia" is a subjective term. We use it as a blanket to disqualify questions we don't like, without specifying the true reason that the question should be closed.

One person's "trivia" is another person's "important to the understanding or appreciation of a movie/TV-show."

The trivia close reason reminds me of this meta post from Arqade: A Close Vote is not a Super-Downvote. Please don't use it as one. Like in that meta post, I feel like some users are using the vague and subjective trivia rule to super-downvote questions that they deem low quality or just don't like by voting to close them, when that should actually be the function of the regular downvote, not the close vote. (I was also guilty of doing this.)

To prevent the close vote from being used as a super-downvote, we should get rid of the vague, subjective, and inconsistently applied trivia close reason. Users who think these types of questions are low quality are still free to downvote them.