On-topic? What games can be played by two people on the same computer

Question

I want to know what games can be played by two people on the same computer.

The highest-voted for this meta question is:

a "best game" one is far too open ended. You'd end up with every game in the archive. Perhaps something more narrow?

So, does my question stand a chance of not being closed?

The same answer says:

"best IDE" type threads are kind of useless, since there's 15 years of those discussions already all over the internet

However, for my question the only discussion I have found is from 2010: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1540007.html

Answer 1

The reason we're so cautious on software-recommendations tags is that some have the propensity to quickly turn into infinite-lists-of-X threads. That is a dozen or so people each posting nine or ten answers. The thread sprawls out over fifteen pages and nobody gets to see half the answers (a fraction of people read past the highest-rated answer). If a new answer comes along months along, it's not going to show on the first page even if it is (somehow) the best answer. It wont get votes.

Allowing open ended questions like this means the system breaks so a point where that question is no longer useful.

As a counter perhaps I would suggest a choice for these sorts of questions when they're asked:

1. You either limit the scope of the question so that is has a very finite number (<10) of answers, or one obviously correct, or...

2. We treat it like a wiki:

   • Question is converted into a CW
   • One answer that everybody contributes to.
   • Asker sets up the first (only) answer with a template for how they want answers.
   • If screenshots are involved, a table of contents at the top of the answer might be advisable.

   The obvious side effect of this is nobody gets reputation but we do get to have an infinite list. Voting is irrelevant but it means new content can still be visible.

I'd like some consensus on this because this is something we haven't addressed formally for a while. If you think it's a good idea, vote it up, if you think it's awful, vote it down and tell me why.

Let me know if you think this is silly and that we shouldn't just not allow infinite-list questions. Having weathered a few myself, I'm pretty certain we can't allow one-x-per-answer infinite lists.

Answer 2

There's one way to find out...

I recommend posting the question, with a comment pointing here.

(Or maybe you have already posted it, but I haven't found it the list of questions in your profile.)

Then Luis Alvarado can delete his post here and put it there (where it belongs). Then we'll see if people vote to close your question. If they do, maybe some of them will post answers here explaining why. If people disagree, maybe some of them will post answers, too (either here, or in the main question to give game recommendations, or both).

My Opinion: Sure, It's On-Topic

There are not very many native games that meet your criteria, and emulated games can be covered by discussing emulators (not necessitating each game to be named and discussed). So personally I doubt this would or should be considered a "big list" question. It may not even be a list question at all. Answers could specify a single game but they need not do so. I don't know if this is Luis Alvarado's position, but his answer here shows that the question you propose to ask does not, in effect, demand one item per answer.

We have some closed software-recommendation questions and some that are kept open only for historical posterity. But a look in that tag shows we have plenty of relatively recent questions that have uncontroversially remained open. If the number of answers is not potentially unlimited, it's probably not a "big list" question. We have questions that garner lists of answers in other areas too, besides software recommendations (see some of the examples I gave here) and are perfectly good.

You should use the game-recommendation tag instead of software-recommendation, by the way. This tag is for requests for games that meet certain specific criteria. Its long-standing existence strongly suggests your question is on-topic. (See its active tab.)

If this weren't asking for games, but other software, there would probably be no doubt that it's appropriate. Imagine if someone asked for a terminal application that took input from multiple keyboards and sent it to multiple ttys. Nobody would think that's off-topic.

There might be another site where this is on-topic. It might even be a better place to ask this. Even if so, that is not sufficient to make it off-topic here.

It's fine that you asked first ...but probably not necessary.

I think that, unfortuately, people have gotten the idea that it's bad to post a question that gets closed. If you think your question should be closed, don't post it. If you think it should stay open, generally speaking, you should post it. Only if there is an established community consensus against some sort of question should you feel obligated to come to meta first. I'm not saying you shouldn't have asked here first--it's fine (though I doubt you'll get a definitive answer). Only that no one should feel obligated to do so.

Closing questions is fundamentally part of the way the site works. It is not an exceptional situation. No moderator involvement is needed to close and reopen questions (though sometimes they are involved). This is because it's a perfectly normal and common thing.