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As can be seen from our previous meta, there is a clear community concensus that image id-requests don't have a place on our site.

As such, we will begin phasing out these questions. The first thing to do (for the moderators) is update the rules to reflect this change. This will start to happen a small while after this post.

Effects of this change:

  • This closure will affect any tagged that are solely based on a single image with no additional sources of information.

  • Image-based Merchandise questions should now use the tag and not use the identification-request tag. Similarly, Cosplay based questions should use the tag.

    Note that these execeptions will need to comply with general identification standards of providing additional information - such as venue, place of purchase, markings, et cetera.

As users, we would like your assistance in cleaning up the existing posts as there are a lot of posts to go through. Please close any appropriate posts as "Too little detail" and they will be added to the review queue. This closure reason will be edited to reflect our new stance.

Because there are so many of these questions, this is potentially a good time to score some nice review-based badges ;)

For new questions / confused users, please direct them towards the original meta post to show them that these questions are no longer allowed.

Finally, we realise identification-requests as a whole are a large elephant in the room - we will revisit the overarching issue after resolving these instances and seeing how they affect the overall quality and also the community's opinion.

Keep up the good work everyone,

-Toshinou

enter image description here

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  • 9
    mm what's that image at the bottom from? (jk it's ToraDora)
    – Hakase
    Feb 8 '16 at 16:52
  • 2
    We should change the reverse image search reason to reflect this and close future questions via that
    – кяαzєя Mod
    Feb 9 '16 at 4:28
  • @ʞɹɐzǝɹ The post explaining how to find images via reverse search should probably be migrated back here, then.
    – JNat StaffMod
    Feb 9 '16 at 10:27
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    I agree with @Jnat - I dislike the duplicate-but-not-a-duplicate closure reason. It'd be better to link against it in the guidelines
    – Toshinou Kyouko
    Feb 9 '16 at 10:31
  • @JNat Okay sounds like a fair deal.
    – кяαzєя Mod
    Feb 9 '16 at 10:53
  • 1
    Ah. Adding merchandise and cosplay to my ignored list.
    – Oded
    Feb 9 '16 at 12:12
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    While I agree that existing questions should be closed, I don't think they should be deleted, except for unanswered questions. Has there been a discussion on this?
    – nhahtdh
    Feb 15 '16 at 4:06
  • @nhahtdh there has been no discussion on the Meta, but reviewers have been closing rather than deleting
    – Toshinou Kyouko
    Feb 15 '16 at 8:04
  • @ToshinouKyouko: My comment is because of this sentence in this post This deletion will affect any tagged identification-questions that are solely based on a single image with no additional sources of information. Would you mind editing the post?
    – nhahtdh
    Feb 15 '16 at 8:32
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    @nhahtdh done :)
    – Toshinou Kyouko
    Feb 15 '16 at 8:52
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    Now that we've banned image-only ID requests, should we rework the ID request prompt? The prompt hasn't changed and makes mention of identifying images specifically.
    – Maroon
    Feb 21 '16 at 21:50
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    @Maroon Yes, please post a separate meta post for it.
    – Madara's Ghost
    Feb 22 '16 at 20:02
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I've noticed a few people still answering image-only id requests, or closing them as duplicates of the "how to reverse image search" question. Please don't answer them.

Let me repeat that in really big letters.

Please don't answer image-only id requests

Answering them will encourage more of them. Even if they're technically off-topic, people who want to ask them will see that they can get answers before they're closed, and keep asking them. We know the people who ask these questions don't care about question quality and don't intend to become regular users of the site, so they don't care if they burn bridges by sneaking in off-topic questions under the fence, as long as they get their answer. Don't give it to them.

I would encourage everyone not to answer in comments either. If you want to help the OP, give them a link to the "how to reverse image search" question and another one to Policy Review: Image-only id requests, and let them know that image-only ID requests are now off-topic. If you know of another site where image id requests are okay, you can point them there. If the OP has 20 rep, you can send them to chat. Then help this site, and vote to close as "Too little detail to be answered."

Okay? :)

Otherwise, good job so far, everyone! I burned through all my close votes three days in a row, and I know lots of other people have as well. I even had the honor to kill my own image question. I just went through a review queue with 36 crappy image id requests up for closure. That's the most full I've ever seen a review queue on Anime and Manga. We're making progress.

enter image description here

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  • 4
    I heartily concur. I will be downvoting any new answers I see on these abominations.
    – senshin
    Feb 12 '16 at 4:58
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    if anyone knows any good third-party id sites, let's collect them somewhere for future use
    – Hakase
    Feb 18 '16 at 10:13
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    @Hakase Definitely, it would be great to have somewhere to send id questioners. As awareness of the other options increases, we might even see a drop in id requestd overall.
    – Torisuda
    Feb 18 '16 at 16:08
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I have created a query to help everyone with their cleanup.

http://data.stackexchange.com/anime/query/edit/433431

It basically looks for identification requests that have an image and are under a certain length.

Feel free to use / fork / ignore

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