Yeah, I've had similar doubts about these posts which is why I put a question about them on the survey. A refresher on how people voted:
I was never able to put my finger on why these posts sat badly with me, but you've got it perfectly here:
the more vague ones have a very slim chance of ever being helpful again, as it's very unlikely anyone will have the same team
I agree that if we value PokeBase as a collection of solutions to problems people may face again, then these questions are among the least valuable we currently allow. The flip side is that the answer to those questions is very much within PokeBase's scope to provide. So there are conflicting ideas on how these posts fit our platform.
In my opinion, this is a situation where you need to meet in the middle. This is why my personal preference for solving this problem is now the red option in that survey. The RMT section already houses a lot of questions that could be described the same way -- nobody is going to have the same team, so the advice is far less useful to other people. I think it makes sense to keep such posts in the same place.
I also think it makes the role of the RMT section easy to understand: "all open-ended feedback for teams belongs on the RMT section". Throwing in moveset rates (which was popular on the survey) would hardly make this more complex. If we combine that with modern rules about post quality there (which would extend to any in-game team posts we ever allow), then I think we've hit about ten birds with one stone.
I would also raise the question of our current practices: what is actually different between "last member for my in-game team" and "rate my in-game team"? Both of them are open-ended questions about in-game teams. We allow one of them and not the other. Why? Is one less open-ended than the other? It's a weird distinction to make. I think the RMT section is a logical solution.
Though, if open-ended in-game team posts do stay on the main section, I don't really agree this is the correct approach for them:
hide them when one of the following happens ...
I don't think there are any negative consequences for keeping those questions around. They float around somewhere on a server, but they're not really harming anybody. Any harm they do comes when they're on the front page of the site.
I just don't see what's in it for us creating a rule that makes us remove resolved questions potentially weeks after they're off the front page. I think these questions should be either be allowed or not allowed -- "sort of" allowed is invariably an annoying rule.
In terms of what I think we should do if these posts don't go to the RMT section... I don't know. Feel free to give your thoughts. I don't think the status quo is that bad?
