Anime: Will this site allow reccommendation questions?

Question

Proposal: Anime & Manga

On the new Anime and Manga StackExchange Proposal, would the site be open to recommendations and similar? A few example questions:

Q1: What is the best anime series you have watched that is under 10 episodes long?

Q2: Would you recommend Ouran Highschool Host Club to a beginner?

Q3: I hate girly love stories (shoujo) and hate all-action anime (shounen), what is the best genre for me?

Broader questions may include:

Qa: I loved Naruto, would I like Bleach?

Qb: I love CLANNAD, what other animes would suit me?

Qc: What is the best Yaoi anime?

Qd: What are some great Yuri mangas?

Qe: What are best anime titles for a beginner?

Qf: What are must-read mangas?

Thanks. I can't wait for the beta to be open! \(^o^)/

Commit to Anime and Manga

Answer 1

This sort of issue should be discussed on the meta site once it's up. Area 51 is for working out the topic of the site and the intended audience. Types of questions and details of scope are best discussed among active participants, with real examples.

The general trend on similar Stack Exchange sites has been not to allow them, but this is not systematic.

• Gaming debated the issue at some length and ended up rejecting recommendation requests.
• Role-Playing Games also debated the issue and decided to allow recommendation requests with some quality guidelines.
• Science Fiction & Fantasy tried recommendation questions early on, and had a few which were consistently poor. We banned them and didn't turn back.
• The now-defunct Literature site (which was a site for readers, not for writers or literature professors) saw many recommendation requests, but mostly low-quality. We tried a quality policy (reproduced below, since it's now lost from the face of the web). It's debatable whether that policy worked: it was very difficult to enforce, and while there were a few good recommendation questions that attracted good answers, there was a lot of dross.
• Movies & TV was warned against recommendation questions on day 1, and has always rejected them as far as I know.

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The Literature recommendation policy

1. The questions must be reasonably specific. Not "What's a good book for a person who likes Harry Potter", but maybe, "What's a good book for a 13 year old boy who likes Harry Potter, Eragon, Percy Jackson, and Artemis Fowl?". The more details, the better. Otherwise, how could you expect someone to possibly answer?
2. Answers should try to recommend as many relevant books as possible. Aim for a syllabus, not for an evening's read.
3. Answers should provide some reasoning on why a book is suitable. Don't just say “read this”, explain why. [If you can't motivate why the book is suitable, consider leaving a comment instead of posting it as an answer. Answers that do not meet this guideline may be removed. --Anna Lear]
4. This is not a popularity contest. Votes should go to the answers that provide the best match for the request. Don't vote up or down because you liked or didn't like the suggested books.
5. Close any question which does not meet these guidelines. The number of votes is irrelevant when deciding whether to close a question.

Answer 2

Answers to recommendation questions are mainly backed by the opinion of the person answering, not concrete fact or evidence. Those types of answers usually lead to debate or extended conversation which isn't a fit for the SE format. SE sites, like Arqade, specifically state that recommendation questions are off topic.

So I would say no, recommendation questions should be off limits.

Answer 3

Questions like phrased by you - immediate close vote. Too little information, too broad, too subjective.

"What are must-read mangas?" - are you even serious?

Possibly if the site ever gets a "community wiki" these would be allowable as the wiki entries.

Now if you narrow it down to something like

• What full-length anime movies can be considered the iconic originators of the Kemono genre?

This is an open question still open for debate, will yield a list of a at most several Tezuka's titles, and so can be answered completely and satisfactorily within one post - true the complete answer is more likely to be spread over a few posts, but still the list is completely finite. No risk into trailing off into 300 questions of personal preferences.

• *I watched Chobits and loved the idea of Persocom. Are there any other shows that exploit this idea? If they happen to be too numerous, please give the most popular/iconic ones.*

Sometimes I run into asking a question to which I expect an answer that is a fixed list of 2-5 items and only when the answers start coming in, I realize it's more of a "200-500 items" list and definitely unsuitable. And while we all have our own preferences, the answer can be limited to 3-5 examples upon which all can agree that they are iconic.

• Do you know any authoritative 'Top ten must read mangas' lists that include synopses?

As opposed to polling the community (a bunch of totally random people) here, you're asking for a resources compiled by an authoritative source. Now what comprises an authoritative source may be debatable, but you're sure to get a list much shorter and probably more reliable than polling here.