We have, as a community, decided to consider commercials and music videos as "off topic" for the purpose of identify questions.
What identify-this questions should be kept/deleted?
ID-This-Commercial Will be Off-Topic
ID-This-Music-Video Will be Off-Topic
Scrap any identify-this-actor question which doesn't include a description/title of the movie/tv series the actor was in - regardless of whether the post includes a picture or not.
I'm completely OK with this.
Unfortunately, the close reason as written can be confusing to people because it makes no note of these decisions and the guidelines for Identify questions on the "What topics can I ask about here?" page do not mention them, either.
"Identification questions must contain sufficient detail to be answerable. For help writing a good identification question, see: Identify-This-X-Questions."
And the link takes you to the information:
Identification questions are currently on-topic for this site. Please try to give as much detail as possible:
- Where you watched the movie or TV show
- When you watched the movie or TV show
- Any idea of how old it was
- Any idea of country of origin (if known)
- Whether it was animated or not
- Any distinctive detail
There is a single sentence at the end of a long paragraph that links to the question above but it is very easy to miss and should be made more obvious.
We should make these community decisions more apparent to people asking ID questions about these topics so that they understand why their question was closed.
I recommend we change the close reason text to something similar to the following:
"Identification questions must contain sufficient detail to be answerable and should not be about a commercial or music video. For help writing a good identification question, see: Identify-This-X-Questions."
And the "Identify-This-X-Questions" text, should be adjusted as well:
Identification questions are currently on-topic for this site with the exception of commercials and music videos. Please try to give as much detail as possible:
If we decide to not change the close reason text, at the very least the note needs to be made more obvious on the "Asking questions" page. These questions have been picking up recently, particularly about commercials, and it should be made more apparent why the questions are being closed.