Reading several recent questions and answers, I've noticed a pattern of questions that are extremely simple and for which the answer could be very easily found in other fansites. For example:
https://www.tibiaqa.com/5532/where-can-i-get-golden-sea-horse-figurine
There is nothing special about this item that makes this question relevant, in my opinion. It's a simple quest reward, and how to obtain it can be easily found in fansites which provide guides to quests and information about items. We can list several examples:
Of course, one can argue that TibiaQA is an independent website that should have all the information on itself. But in my opinion this does not help TibiaQA grow as a unique fansite (which it is), and can instead simply become a repetition of content that already exists elsewhere. If questions like that one become common, then the possibility to start asking "how to get item X" for all the thousands of items in Tibia becomes real. The same can be done for all missions of all quests: "how do I go through the Pits of Inferno maze?" and even things as simple as item's properties: "how many imbuing slots the Rod of Destruction has?". None of this is hard to find, sometimes the own game's Cyclopedia will have the information.
I'm not saying questions and answers must be absolutely unique in content that does not exist in other fansites. As a fansite admin myself, I can assure you that all fansites help each other, directly or indirectly. Players will of course search on Wikis to reply questions here, but wiki editors will also learn things on TibiaQA and add that to their fansites. I do believe there should be guidelines, however, for this reasons:
- Allowing for such extremely simple questions makes way for abusing the points system. Users can start asking all sorts of simple questions like the examples I gave and even answer them themselves for the points. Yes, answering your own question is not necessarily a problem and even recommended if done honestly, but it's not always good.
- These questions may hide questions with real value. Once someone is on TibiaQA, there's a chance they'll browse and see what else is going on. If the website looks like a bunch of things that were just copied/translated from other fansites, it won't feel like a place worth returning to.
Since I gave an example of a question I think is bad, let me give a fresh example of a question I think is good:
https://www.tibiaqa.com/5575/set-and-items-able-to-reduce-mana-drain-damage-for-knights-level-100
Even though the answer to this question can be found in fansites as well, it's more specific because it's asking for the Knight vocation and for a level range. This means the answer has to filter the data it finds, for example. Furthermore, a good answer can go further and such cases and make notes about the item. For example, perhaps one of the existing items for this condition is extremely expensive and thus not affordable by a level 100 player, meaning a simple list of items (as you'd find on fansite lists) wouldn't be as good as an answer given to this question.
Having said all that: should a line be drawn regarding the complexity of questions? Or does the community of TibiaQA believes that every single question is valid, even if the answer can be easily found elsewhere, such as the client's Cyclopedia.
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