Stricter policy for opinion-based questions

Question

Hello everyone,

in a couple of days, we will be applying a stricter policy to the opinion-based questions, in order to maintain only those questions that bring value to the community as a whole. We will be removing questions that

• ask for a single-player story (eg. "Do you have any unusual habit in Tibia?", "Why you love your vocation?", "What is the biggest war you remember?")
• ask about a "favorite" stuff (eg. "What is your favorite outfit / achievement / quest / hunting place?"....) - most of those questions can be easily fixed to be more general, like "What is the best looking outfit?" - note the addition of the specific, but opinion-based criterion - "best looking"

Most of the questions will be scheduled for removal. Some of them that received many up-votes and interest will be just closed.

Please note that this is announced in advance so that people have time to refine their opinion-based questions if they wish (and if there's a way to do so). If you are unsure whether your question (or any other) falls into the above categories, you are welcome to post here. If you are looking for ideas how to improve the opinion-based question, here's a good place to do as well.

Finally, if there are any other types of opinion-based questions that you think should be cleaned, let us know.

Best,
Sebastian
the TibiaQA.com team

Answer 1

For now I've decided to close all of the questions that are asking for a story, rather than an answer to a specific question. I'll update this post as more questions are closed. Also, similar questions that are asking users to submit a story should no longer be accepted. The proper way to deal with them is to flag them as off-topic, as they do not belong to Q&A site. It would also be appreciated if together with a flag you explained the new user why their post does not belong here.

The list of closed topics:

• https://www.tibiaqa.com/4905/what-is-your-most-sentimental-item-in-the-game
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/4890/how-many-hours-took-you-to-finish-the-longest-quest-you-done
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/4889/what-was-the-longest-time-you-spent-hunting-uninterruptedly
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/4078/what-is-the-prize-you-received-in-a-contest-that-you-like-the-most
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/2723/how-many-hours-do-you-spend-per-day-on-tibia
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/4983/why-you-love-your-vocation
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/5217/do-you-have-any-unusual-habit-in-tibia
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/5252/who-is-the-most-legendary-player-on-your-server
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/5277/how-much-time-do-you-wait-on-average-for-spawn
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/2432/someone-here-try-to-hunt-the-boosted-creature
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/2299/what-is-the-first-thing-come-to-your-mind-when-you-read-rookgaard
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/466/whats-the-most-ridiculous-extravagant-thing-tibia-would-spend-your-money
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/3515/how-often-do-you-kill-tibia-bosses
• https://www.tibiaqa.com/5265/what-monster-were-you-most-afraid-of-when-you-first-got-into-tibia

The above are scheduled for deletion, unless someone finds a way to edit them to make them acceptable as a Q&A-valid question.

Answer 2

Being active again here for the past few days made me worry with the amount of opinion-based questions. I'm happy to see this change because opinion-based questions do not contribute to building a knowledge base. They may be fun or interesting to read, but it's not what a QA website is about.

Surely, many opinion-based questions can be reworded to be more objective. But this will only become usual if the questions that are opinion based are flagged and closed. Currently, simply flagging them has not hindered similar questions or answers, on the contrary, it's pretty much a flag that says "leave your own answer - anything is valid".

It's also a very easy way to farm points that aren't real contribution, and closing these questions will help preventing this.

Answer 3

Aww, nooooooo! Don't remove them! If the questions are fine but just need rewording, then why not just reword them instead? Or only enforce the ones that are created after this new rule?

For instance, does it really matter whether it asks "what is the best outfit / what is your favourite outfit"? They will both get the same answer anyway as they are opinion based. Same with unusual habits. Does it matter if they ask about your unusual habits or "what are the most unusual habits of Tibia players"? The whole point of an opinion based question is to give your own opinion, why can the question not reflect that?

It's not like people are asking "What do you think of my outfit" which would be pretty useless for anyone else to read, but a discussion about favourite outfits in general frankly sounds interesting. I may be alone in this as many poeple seem to prefer only fact-based questions, but honestly, half of the ones I see posted are opinion based too. "What is the best hunting ground for x" might as well be worded "What is your favourite hunting ground for x?"

Comments

It may be interesting, but it's not useful, and it doesn't make the knowledge base grow. It simply serves as a point-farm and gets in the way of real questions/answers when someone is browsing the main page. I would imagine any question that is properly reworded is suitable for being reopened, but for that it would be necessary to have someone doing this job first.

Regarding the "best hunting ground" questions: if asked and answered correctly, these are not opinion based. As long as the person asking defines "best" (safest, better exp, higher profit) and the answer weighs in that and other factors, there can be very good questions of this type which will help lots of players.

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Then why not turn off points for opinion based questions? There is no abuse potential then.

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Because it only solves half of the problem: yes, no abuse in points, but the website will still be "polluted" with irrelevant questions. QA websites are "evaluated" using several metrics, and a website with a considerable rate of opinion based questions and questions without an accepted answer is not a good one. There's also the technical aspect of implementing this, but then it's of course completely out of my league to say if it would be a problem or not.

Answer 4

In my opinion most people will now be de-motivation. The new rules apply from tomorrow, and what was can stay. You can ask questions and answer them yourself, but opinion bassed will be hurt? no comment.

I'm disappointed.

Comments

This is a little sad because we will lose points because of new rules..I understand - on website are more active members and is necessary to improve website and points system. In my opinion:  opinion-based questions should be closed but people should keep points because every one spent time on this website. Over time, many rules can arise but people should't lose points because of it.

Answer 5

Can someone help me to improve my questions?

What is your favorite place to hunt? - I thought about "What is best place to hunt at your level?" But I am not sure.

What is your favorite screenshot place?

Comments

"What is your favorite place to hunt" is usually asked as non opinion-based - "Where to hunt as (profession) on (level) for best exp/profit". The generic "What is your favorite place to hunt" likely needs to be removed.

The second one could be improved if it was more specific. Like "What is the best place to take a screenshot when getting level 100?"

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Thank you for help :)

Answer 6

More than deleted it, I think is better flag the question to be fixed. Fix is more easy than make it again.

I think the opinion-based questions are part of the community integration, because here you can know something about the others user and thahts really good forn to have a frinedship community.