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There has been a lot of back and forth about ID questions on this SE and I think everyone admits something needs to be done at this point. A simple proposal drafted by the mods and community managers is to limit the ID questions to questions that have tangible sources including links, lyrics, pictures of sheet music or album covers, etc. This is to help curb the quality and improve searchability of these questions in general.

Since there's also been a lack of a clear acceptance of policy, as long as this question has a positive score without a clear dissenting highly voted answer, this will be the policy as of December 15th. The plan is to use the current lack of info close reason to close any questions that do not meet this policy.

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    As a side note, there may be a follow up with a proposed id question answer format that we desperately need to prevent a stream of low quality flags.
    – Dom Mod
    Dec 1, 2021 at 17:26
  • Links seems like a problematic inclusion. They frequently go dead, and our current policy of including a text description of the music is generally not followed or does not produce useful descriptions. Perhaps some language to the effect of "a link must be accompanied by a secondary, tangible source."
    – Aaron
    Dec 1, 2021 at 20:16
  • Lyrics have the potential to create copyright issues. There should also be some language offering guidance on what is legally permitted (unless SE has some larger policy that covers potential copyright problems such that this isn't an issue).
    – Aaron
    Dec 1, 2021 at 20:19
  • @Aaron I agree links and lyrics have issues and to be fair the lyrics would be the only semi memory based item as they are unlikely to have the actual full lyrics. This is on top of other concerns that come from this like people miss hear lyrics all the time and I can point out some really ridiculous examples.
    – Dom Mod
    Dec 1, 2021 at 20:33
  • We're kind of between a rock and a hard place here as there haven't been a lot of suggestions and we really need to move in a direction here. We could go full blow disallow, but that would be a seismic change.
    – Dom Mod
    Dec 1, 2021 at 20:37
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    I certainly wouldn't shed any tears is they went away altogether, but I understand the level of change involved. I do find gingerbreadboy's suggestions helpful, specific, and in line with what you've described in your post here.
    – Aaron
    Dec 1, 2021 at 20:56
  • Mostly but maybe initially allowing things like remembered lyrics and personal recordings. If we are still haveing problems we can clamp down more or remove altogether.
    – Dom Mod
    Dec 1, 2021 at 20:59
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    @Namaskaram No it's just about two weeks from the posting.
    – Dom Mod
    Dec 3, 2021 at 5:56
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    @Namaskaram this change has been needed for years and as you can see on the linked meta post similar ideas have been suggested with positive feedback with the community as a whole not acting no them. I'm sorry for my typos and the time frame may be short, but this is pretty much saying we need to take a step towards this now.
    – Dom Mod
    Dec 3, 2021 at 13:46
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    @Namaskaram We've been talking about this for a long time already, it's time someone pushed it through to force a change.
    – Mast
    Dec 9, 2021 at 19:29
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    @Namaskaram Just a show of moral support for your posts on this thread. I think they're valuable. For someone new to this discussion, they — and the responses to them — help add some context.
    – Aaron
    Dec 10, 2021 at 19:52
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    @Namaskaram Your call, of course. But I'm of a mind that the more different people who weigh in, the better.
    – Aaron
    Dec 12, 2021 at 5:28
  • What did Namaskaram say?
    – user1271772
    Dec 17, 2021 at 12:44
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    Two weeks is quite short, can't you give longer?
    – user1271772
    Dec 17, 2021 at 12:45
  • @user1271772 It's been a year in the making and the site is hurting badly. This is a continuation of the linked proposal that's been on the site for over a year and we're acting on it now. Namaskaram deleted their own comments so if they want to tell you fine, but it's up to them.
    – Dom Mod
    Dec 17, 2021 at 15:28

2 Answers 2

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I'm on Movies & TV, and they officially borked all "identify" questions. It's just a thick black line they will no longer cross, even when the movie or TV show is almost immediately identifiable based on the description.

The problem with music is that many times it's genre-specific, whereas movies aren't as stringent. I mean, yes there is the occasional Bollywood question over there that only a limited number of people can answer, but generally movie fans will have watched most newer movies no matter the genre. Music, on the other hand, isn't appreciated widely by people outside their preferred genre, making potential answers even more scarce. So, with a diminished pool of prospective answers, the quality will also diminish.

Let's just drop them completely. They're difficult to answer, and the probability than someone else will find the question/answer usable or informative is probably close to zero.

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    Even on M&TV we had many "I saw this when I was a child" questions without any clue as to how old the asker was. We had to guess even that.
    – Tetsujin
    Dec 16, 2021 at 17:42
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The justification for this policy, as it is being implemented, was fraudulent. The proposed policy was to to get rid of all "memory" questions:

Proposal: Limit Idenifcation questions to tangible questions only (non-memory) ... A simple proposal drafted by the mods and community managers is to limit the ID questions to questions that have tangible sources including links, lyrics, pictures of sheet music or album covers ect.

But it's being applied to questions like mine that included the title, singer and link, even showing the cover art.

enter image description here

It was not a moderator mistake either:

enter image description here

Someone could conceivably google, say "my uncle used to love me roger miller genre" and find questions like this. So such questions are not only useful to those who asked them, but also others. And the purpose of this site is to serve both.

Frankly, I barely use this SE, but this proposal, motivation, vote and implementation are so bizarre that I had to say something.

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    Read the answer above you and you'll understand why it was done. There's years of pain and issues these questions brought to the entire site. Trying to come in on the 11th hour is not useful.
    – Dom Mod
    Jan 4 at 5:24
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    Also if people were taking care of these questions and moderating the quality, this would not be an issue, but because no one was doing that we're in this position.
    – Dom Mod
    Jan 4 at 5:25
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    @Dom (a) That answer wasn't part of the proposal that people were voting on, and (b) A different answer got more votes +10 vs +3 and it suggested that questions with a YouTube link should stay. You are literally going against the will of the people.
    – MWB
    Jan 4 at 5:49
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    again the answer sat at 6 with this question said all should go_. It did not get any downvotes until after the policy started being implemented. The question you are pointing at also wanted all to go. These are the same arguments used to keep these questions here and embedded them deeper into the site. Quality moderation was not happening and people wanted something stronger. I understand that no one likes their question closed or deleted, but this is the direction the site is going and the site cannot survive with nothing changing.
    – Dom Mod
    Jan 4 at 5:54
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    Did you also read the first sentence of the answer: "My reflex is to say yes, goodness yes, these questions tend to be such poor quality they is just noise." I know the answer goes on to do a hybrid solution, but again all more recent meta discussions have been for the mindset of that quote.
    – Dom Mod
    Jan 4 at 5:57
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    @Dom "Did you also read the first sentence of the answer". I read the whole answer. You read the first sentence and are ignoring "reflex" even in that. Maybe you shouldn't accuse people of inattentive reading.
    – MWB
    Jan 4 at 6:50
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    you didn't read my comment as I pointed out that was only part of it. The point of that comment is exactly what I'm telling you now. There's a lot of pain around those questions that has been with the site for a while and people have been trying to deal with them. Hybrid solutions like that need moderation to enforce them which wasn't happening and the "reflex" to get rid of them took over on this post because it was needed.
    – Dom Mod
    Jan 4 at 6:57
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    Let's also put it this way: if you get everything you want, would you stay and help moderate the site? That's the issue we're dealing with. The people that want these questions don't take care of them which is why we are here now. You are arguing over a question that is a sentence and a link that can rot away (which many already have). If this effort was put into cleaning up the site and taking care of this content, we would not be having this discussion.
    – Dom Mod
    Jan 4 at 7:01
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    @MWB - Honestly, your question isn't really a "good question". It doesn't really have an answer. It requires some subjectivity. "What genre is this?" questions are a bit dicey, because what I think is Grindcore, you might think of as Punk. We really need to focus on getting definitive answers to questions, because that's what StackOverflow is designed for. It's not a "chat board", people ask questions and SO is supposed to provide an answer. If a direct, correct answer can't be provided, then the question doesn't belong here. At least according to the SO Meta.
    – Johnny Bones Mod
    Jan 4 at 14:21

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