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In the recent bumps, I have noticed this question as an allowed question.

It seems that it wasn't closed because the scope was reasonably defined. Thus I want to ask, what exactly constitutes reasonably scoped as per status? Not to mention, the question is perhaps prone to rapid change as well. How can we determine that it isn't?

Going back to the actual question, I honestly don't feel that the number of series that qualify can be considered as a small list. I can probably name a hundred series that will work for the given question, which will easily fill a nice long wiki page.

Regardless of whether this question should actually be closed or not, where exactly is the line drawn for such type questions where it is considered to be reasonably scoped? It seems like reasonably scoped depends on personal opinions and close votes.

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    We had a chat about this early on when the site first started and we determined that in order to not sound too strict we decided to use the words "reasonably scoped." Initially, what we didn't the list to be too long, but we also didn't want to penalize the asker when they don't know whether the list will be long or not, and thus is how this wording came to be.
    – кяαzєя Mod
    Dec 17, 2013 at 19:17
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    I've forgotten some of the history, but it seems to me that this ought to fall under our "list of anime" ban. IIRC that one is more recent than the chat that we had.
    – Logan M
    Dec 18, 2013 at 3:19
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    I personally like lists, but it is truly unfair when a list requesting for zombie genre gets rejected while a list for in or trapped in a game gets accepted.
    – krikara
    Dec 18, 2013 at 3:22
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    It can get closed with a change of scope as too broad and left around. What we should do is prevent the broken window problem.
    – Braiam
    Dec 20, 2013 at 1:15

1 Answer 1

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After we wrote the list question policy, we later came to the conclusion that out-of-universe lists (those calling for a list of anime, manga, or other titles) are rarely reasonably scoped (see How should we deal with out-of-universe list questions in general? and Do we still like questions asking for lists of anime/manga/etc.?). The problem isn't necessarily even the number of possible answers. It's the fact that to be able to write a full list, even in principle, one needs to know about every anime ever made, even when there are only a few examples. The basic premise of the list question rules was that we should allow list questions in which we can reasonably expect someone to write a complete list, and disallow them when a complete list is practically impossible.

Hence, these sorts of out-of-universe list questions aren't allowed. There are possible exceptions when the list already starts from a smaller collection than "all anime ever". For instance, asking for a list of all Miyazaki films which have a particular plot element might be okay if it satisfies the other list criteria, since we're starting from around 20-30 titles rather than tens of thousands. There are plenty of anime watchers who have seen every Miyazaki film, so it's not that unreasonable to ask about all of them. But if a "list of anime" question starts from all anime ever, it's not reasonably scoped.

The question was closed as too broad, which was the right decision in this case. I'm posting this mostly for posterity.

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