"Trivia" questions are not off-topic, and only questions that ask to identify movies and TV shows (and episodes) are considered off-topic.
For example: questions like “I remember [insert description here] about a movie/TV show; what movie/TV show was this?” are closed as off-topic here. As far as I know, there is NO community consensus to ban ALL questions that involve identifying something about a movie.
In comments under a recently closed question asking to identify songs
from a movie, the OP directly asked the question "Where in Help does
it say this is off-topic?"
Based on the description of the question, I'm assuming you're referring to this currently closed and deleted question: Songs sung in Beetlejuice (1988) (screenshot of question), which asked to identify both songs and artist. The question was closed as both identification and trivia.
I've actually started a meta discussion post about identifying songs/music in movies back in 2012: Should questions about which artist sang or played a song or music in a movie be allowed? (If I'm not mistaken, this was the first meta discussion post here about identifying movie songs/music.) Two of the three answers to my meta post stated that identifying songs/music in movies is considered "trivia" and thus off-topic, while the current top-voted answer stated that it is acceptable and not "trivia."
However, regardless of whether it’s considered trivia or not, a recent meta post from Oct. 2022 shows that the community no longer considers trivia questions off-topic. See the relevant meta posts: Which trivia questions are on-topic and which are off-topic? and We're retiring the "trivia" close-reason. The mods have not updated the “What topics can I ask about here?” help center article and the site tour to reflect the community consensus yet.
We could close as trivia, but perhaps it would be simpler in the long run to expand this first rule to cover additional elements.
To conclude, we should not expand the list of off-topic identification questions in the help center to also include song/music identification due to a lack of community consensus on the matter and because "trivia" questions are no longer considered off-topic by the community. Identifying songs/music in movies might actually contribute further to the appreciation of a movie.
Addendum to address comments:
(Update: Note that on 2023-01-05, after the comments below were posted, the "trivia" close reason had been removed.)
Ok I'm confused. You're saying that even though there's still a "trivia" close reason, trivia is no longer off-topic?
The current community consensus is that trivia is NOT off-topic, as I've explained above. However, it is still stated in our current close reasons that trivia is off-topic, which does not reflect community consensus.
So... no one has taken the time to update the close reasons? Or am I missing something.
Yes. The reason for the contradiction is that mods have yet to update the close reasons to reflect community consensus. Only mods have the ability to update the close reasons, which are based on community consensus.
ID questions are off-topic, simple as that. They're bad, we don't want them.
Only questions that ask to identify movies and TV shows (and episodes) from a description are considered off-topic here. For example, questions like “I remember [something] about a movie/TV show; what movie/TV show was this?” are closed as off-topic here. As far as I know, there is no community consensus to ban all questions that involve identifying something about a movie, such as the question I linked to above.
