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A certain Hakase-type Tomato had a good idea of a floating checklist for identification request questions. I believe that this is a good idea, as many of the new users who use this site for id-requests seem to struggle with details to give.

I'd like to open suggestions to the community for a checklist to help new users better understand they should include in their question, so other users have something to go on when they make an attempt at find what they're looking for. This checklist is meant to be a reference guide, rather than a set of requirements, explaining to question posers what their question lacks, instead of merely telling them that there is "not enough detail to be answered."

This way we can more explicitly remind these users of what their id-request may be lacking. What comes after that is up to them.

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If you posted a description request, try the following to get better answers and more upvotes!

These primary details will help us most; try to give at least one of:

  • A complete description of one significant character: Hair color, eye color, skin tone, clothes, etc.
  • A complete description of one significant location: Type of location (farm, house, etc.), style of location (colors, notable characteristics), etc.
  • A complete description of a plot point: Detailed information about a story arc, central theme of an episode, or concept focused on

AND

Some secondary details will help us a lot; try to give at least two of:

  • Character's name (approximations are fine)
  • Incomplete character descriptions: Gender, approximate hair style, etc.
  • Type of media: OVA, TV show, serialized manga, one-shot, doujin, etc.
  • Publisher, licensor, distributor, etc.

AND

And any additional details will help, too; try to give as many as possible of:

  • Year you saw it (and month, if possible)
  • Publication you read it in, or TV channel/network you saw it on
  • What language your read/saw it in
  • What kind of art style it has
  • Genre
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If you posted an image or video clip request, try the following to get better answers and more upvotes!

First, try a simple Reverse Image Search and let us know if that didn't work!

If that didn't work, try to edit your question to include some of the following:

  • The image, video, GIF, etc. that you are asking about (duh!)
  • How you found this image: link us to the forum thread, the website, etc. that you found it on
  • Which search engines you've tried to find the source on
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As I see it, we gotta compile a shortlist of bullet list items that would fit in one or very few lines in the side widget. We're dealing with lazy people here, so the longer each point, the more chance of tl;dr and we don't want that. In addition to the basic description, add a (?) button that shows a list of examples. Consider (the text within parentheses) as an example of that hint.

General:

  • Work type (anime, movie, ova, manga, text novel, game novel, etc.)
  • Genre (comedy, psychological, fighting, fantasy, horror, slice-of-life, etc.)
  • Year of production. If you don't know, try to guess.
  • When you first saw/read it
  • [image ID] Original image link − [in addition to the image uploaded to i.stack add the original link for a way to backtrack the source]
  • What other works are like this / commonly associated with − [this could help find it through recommendations and related/similar works on anime database sites]

Character description:

  • Human / animal / fantasy creature
  • Peculiar features (metal helmet, red shades, skull-themed accessories)
  • Hair style and color
  • Eye color (some characters have different colored eyes)
  • Clothes (uniform, suit, pajamas)
  • Apparent age (some characters are definitely young, in their teens or old, and sometimes they are thousands of years old, but look like kids)
  • Occupation (student, worker, teacher, detective, ninja, NEET)

Location:

  • Inside a building / on the street / in a vehicle
  • Sky color / interior decoration
  • City street / school / office / cafe / shopping mall

Story:

  • What was happening in the scene you remember
  • What else was happening
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  • some of these I feel are too minor to fit into our '3 items' rule - You could say the character is a human wearing a school uniform that was in a school and get 3. But perhaps we could have minor & major points like Kilua suggests – Toshinou Kyouko Oct 27 '15 at 17:12
  • I didn't even take that 3-items rule into account when making this suggestion. The importance of various points is very different from work to work. I think we can't objectively judge whether a point is minor or major without knowing its importance, so we shouldn't try to enforce this overly vague minimum threshold. Let's make it at least 5/10/15 distinct points of description instead? – Hakase Oct 27 '15 at 17:29
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    You can't ask these new users to do too much all at once. The persona of typical id-req users are typically younger audiences, a lot of time they are ignorant of the site rules, structures, especially etiquette. They see anime and have as a sort of plaything that they have fun with when it interests them and tossed aside when they are bored of them. They come in with a general sort of naivety, asking for the world and expect it to be given to them without question. But instead they get pushed back and admonished for their actions. – кяαzєя♦ Oct 28 '15 at 1:30
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    Most of the time they are unwilling to find out and correct things in fear of antagonism, which can run pretty rampant in certain parts of community and subculture on the internet. By no means would I like the community to follow suit. Instead I'd like to make it easier for new users that don't understand the rules and culture an opportunity to help themselves, and be intrinsically rewarded in to process. Instead of forcing them to add certain thing, I feel that encourages them through simple examples to be more effective and less heavy-handed. – кяαzєя♦ Oct 28 '15 at 1:36

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