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We have a clear policy that recommendation questions, including open-ended list questions, are firmly off-topic. That means asking for "what are all the examples of X", where X is some literary trope, would be quickly closed.

What about asking for "does X exist?"? The example that brought this to mind is Has a parody of a work of literature ever become more successful than the original work? (one of the oldest questions on the site, from the first day of private beta). The general form of the type of question I'm asking about would be "is there any work of literature satisfying such-and-such?" (for example, featuring a particular trope or combination of features). Technically, such questions could be answered by a simple "yes, here's one example", but arguably, such "here's one example" answers could turn into open-ended lists just as easily as "what are all the works of literature satisfying such-and-such?".

Tsundoku's comment suggests rewording that question to "What is the oldest example of literary parody that became more successful than the original (literary) work?". This is the policy applied to such questions at SFF.SE, but I don't really like it. To me (and probably even more so to new users), it feels like bureaucratic jumping through hoops: asking something that isn't what the OP originally asked but would give them what they wanted (one example), just in order to satisfy the letter of the rules on site scope.

I'm not necessarily advocating for doing anything with such questions, but I thought it's a discussion worth having. Should we leave them alone? Close them like list questions? Modify them somehow, either as Tsundoku suggested or in some other way? It's a type of question that might naturally occur to many people interested in literature, so we may get more such questions in the future.

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  • This is a fuzzy category. For example the question Was The Glass Menagerie the first memory play? could be rephrased as "are there any memory plays that predated The Glass Menagerie?" If there were a lot of examples, the answers could turn into an open-ended list. (Since nobody has come up with any examples so far, this seems unlikely to happen.) Commented Jun 9, 2024 at 10:52

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If the question "does X exist?" is a reasonable question, then it will take some thought or research to answer. In this case, there really should not be too many examples of X, in which case it won't cause too big a problem if we leave it open. And I think these questions can be interesting.

So maybe we just need to find ways to close unreasonable questions "does X exist?" where anybody with a half-decent knowledge of the subject area can think of examples. How many of these have we had so far? And would it be fair to close them as list questions?

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  • We could even rethink our policy on list questions and introduce something like Mathematics SE's big-list tag. Commented Aug 7, 2024 at 22:08
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To add to this discussion, here's another example that has proved contentious: Is there an edition of "Life on the Mississippi" with historical commentary?

The chain of comments provides a good range of differing perspectives:

  • There are close-votes for this question on the basis that it's asking for a recommendation (it's not) or that it's an open-ended query "not scoped clearly enough to accept objectively supported answers of reasonable length". I think the scope of this question is sufficiently limited to avoid an open-ended list-type answer and ensure it can be objectively supported. I'm voting to leave it open. – Chappo Hasn't Forgotten
  • @ChappoHasn'tForgotten Asking for recommendations is off-topic even when asking for a recommended edition of a specific work. See this question, comments thereupon, its answers, and the discussion in chat. – verbose
  • I feel like it's a factual question, though, as to whether such an edition exists. – Sean Duggan
  • Although, a quick google for "life on the mississippi" annotated brings up at least 4 different results, almost all "independently published", with different covers, which suggests that there may be too many "correct" answers out there. Also, I'm not certain how many of them specifically comment on history. – Sean Duggan
  • @verbose This post doesn't ask for recommendations, it simply asks for a factual response, viz is there an edition of this specific work that includes an historical commentary? An answer of "Yes" would be too short to be acceptable, but an answer of "Yes. A preliminary search reveals 4 editions that might fit this request. The following is a brief description of each...." would be an excellent addition to our Lit.SE library. Do you think this site is being overwhelmed with such posts? It's not the same kind of question your comment links to. – Chappo Hasn't Forgotten
  • @ChappoHasn'tForgotten The question header is not the entire question. OP says "I am looking for an edition of Life on the Mississippi with historical commentary." That makes it just like the Malory question; neither is a question that has a closed-ended answer. To argue otherwise seems odd to me. As another comment says: "there may be too many 'correct' answers out there." If X posts a list of four such editions, what's to stop Y from posting a list of another three? –verbose

There's clear agreement that obvious recommendation questions are unacceptable and therefore off-topic. And verbose's thoughtful answer provides an important differentiation between finite (acceptable) and open-ended (not acceptable) list questions. But this meta question points to the critical issue: how do we define "open-ended"?

Peter Shor's answer moves us a bit closer to a solution by focusing on how many "examples" (i.e. discrete solutions to the question) are likely. Peter suggests two potential filters:

  • is the number of examples reasonably limited? – in which case the question would be allowable; and
  • can "anybody with a half-decent knowledge of the subject area ... think of examples"? – in which case the question should be closed.

Both filters are a reformulation of the "finite" list-question type, the primary assessment being common sense. "Are there any novels in which humans use magic to teleport themselves?" should be closed, as it's too obvious and broad; "Is there a Harry Potter novel in which someone dies due to their incorrect use of the 'disapparate' spell?" should be allowed, as it's specific and limited (finite).

But how do we resolve what "reasonably limited" means? In the Mark Twain question, Sean found four examples with his simple search query, but how do we know whether that's the tip of the iceberg, or whether the specifications in the question actually rule out nearly all examples? Do we need to wait to see what expert answer(s) we get, or do we prejudge the question's scope when we may have little expert knowledge in that particular area? Is a preliminary internet search query sufficient to suggest what action we should take?

These are difficult questions to answer, so I'm going to suggest we go back to what Stack Exchange exists for, and look at how we honour our purpose, maintain the site's integrity and still encourage contributions.

Our purpose: "Literature Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for scholars and enthusiasts of literature. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about literature." [my emphasis]

Common sense dictates that we don't accept "every question". Experience shows that some of our answers are not very detailed. But I reckon Lit.SE has the highest proportion of detailed, comprehensive, authoritative answers of all the SE sites I've been active on (EL&U, ELL, Literature, Writing, Astronomy, Physics & several others). I suspect we might also have the fewest questions and fewest answers of any of those sites. We should take that into account when we consider how strict we need to be on questions that might be a bit open-ended.

That makes me lean towards being a bit more permissive on what we consider "reasonably limited".

Regarding the Mark Twain question, I'd prefer to leave it open. Our Lit.SE library will benefit from this question being answered, but I very much doubt we'll get more than three answers. We might not even get an answer at all.

I think that's a reasonable approach.

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    "closed (acceptable)" - this feels a bit odd, in the SE setting :-) Maybe use the word "finite" instead of "closed"? Commented Aug 7, 2024 at 14:09
  • Thanks @Randal'Thor. Good suggestion. I've amended my answer accordingly. I wonder if zero votes means no one is sure whether this is a useful answer, or perhaps no one is interested in this particular issue, or (I hope not!) no one reads the Meta posts? Commented Aug 26, 2024 at 3:56

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