My first question was an identify question. I know I'm not the most valuable member of the community, but I believe I've given valuable contributions to the community over time. I also know that any answer I write is going to be too late to change any policy since the decision has already been made. I would have voiced my opinion earlier but I didn't find out about this post until I read about the outcome on SciFi.SE.
First lets talk about the politics:
It seems to me that a small group of users really don't like identify questions, and they have been campaigning to get rid of them for a long time. I feel like this cadre of users doesn't want identify questions to succeed so they employ a variation of a time honored political game for repression.
- You find some reason to declare the thing you don't like bad. Bonus points if you can justify this with something that wasn't considered negative before.
- You implement controls ostensibly to help but they really just let you build your case why the thing is bad.
- Rinse and repeat step two while increasing the controls and building your case.
- Declare the thing you don't like unfixable once you feel like you have enough political support for elimination.
- Eliminate the thing you don't like.
That has been the evolution here, and in conflicts since the dawn of time. Here the progression was as follows:
- Decide that identify questions are bad. Then they decided to use closure rates as the 'reason' why they're bad. This fits well with the pattern I specified above because closing a question as unclear isn't supposed to be punitive. It is supposed to be helpful.
- Specify stricter guidelines for identify questions. Naturally stricter guidelines mean more flags/closures which reinforces our metric of why identify questions are bad.
- Rinse and repeat, with stricter and stricter guidelines while proclaiming in an exasperated tone how you keep trying to 'fix the problem' but it only balloons.
- Test the waters periodically on meta to gauge support for identify questions.
- Declare victory and ban identification questions.
As you can see identification questions were doomed from the moment we accepted their premise that closures are bad, and closures are the metric for worth.
Why I liked identification questions
I enjoyed identify questions here and still do on SciFi.SE. Here are some of the reasons why I like them:
Identify questions remind me of old works I enjoyed years ago.
Sometimes after reading an identify question I will be reminded of a show, movie, or story I'd read or watched a long time ago. I get a warm blast of nostalgia that brightens my day. Sometimes the connection is strong enough to drive me to re-watch or reread the work. So in this way these questions can increase my local happiness a little bit. While you might not care about that I do.
Identify questions introduce me to interesting new works I look forward to enjoying.
Admittedly this has happened more frequently on SciFi.SE than here but I have found some amazing creative works through identify questions. I regularly read the identify questions for this very reason even if they already have an accepted answer or if I know from the title that I haven't read it yet. At some level an identify question is like a positive peer review for the work because it resonated so strongly with that individual that they're actively seeking to reconnect with it. Don't you want to have more experiences that are so impactful you want to reconnect with them after a decade or more?
Identify questions allow me to marvel at the astonishing capabilities of my peers.
I don't know how many times I've marveled at the encyclopedic knowledge and seemingly perfect recall of some of our power users. The user on Movies.SE that I most marvel at with identification questions is Walt. I was continually impressed at his ability to correctly answer seemingly obscure identification questions.
Identify questions welcome new members.
Sure many of these members drop off and never come back but the same can be said of all new members. The fact of the matter is the user base on every stack is dominated (rep and generally participation wise) by a handful of super users. Most people just lurk or never come back. I personally don't see the problem with that. Some will stay and contribute more, like I did, and some will disappear. In my opinion all beneficial contributions are encouraged and continuing contributors are treasured.
