Question: I think we're getting too many **"Game Like ..."** questions, like [this](https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/3054/games-of-the-same-strategy-and-depth-as-puerto-rico-that-play-in-90-minutes-or-le) and [that](https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/1619/games-of-the-same-depth-and-play-time-as-race-for-the-galaxy).

These seem to be very subjective with so few details that thousands of games could be listed. You also could make thousands of these types of questions by just subbing another game name in,

**"Games of same depth as CandyLand?"**

I see this a issue of **Rating** games, which is already done at [BoardGameGeek](http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame), and doesn't fit well on this site. What we really are parallel to is the game-specific forums at BGG, though with a much better interface and format.

**EDIT:** Discussion (as this post is) doesn't really work well on these sites. For example, you can't answer an answer except with little comments, and there's no threading. Forum sites are designed fine for subjective questions, but this site with all answers related to the question, is designed much better for specific-answer types, like rule Q&A and strategy questions. You can see how ungainly it was for me to put all this in the comments to CrazyJugglerDrummer's answer, and how even editing this into my question makes a asynchronous discussion look synchronous, but of course this now makes the comments and some of the answers look out-of-place(time).

What does the community think about this and the effect on our Q&A site?

Answer: 
Personally, I'm not a fan of any such questions.

I feel that there is no one objective answer to them and that makes such questions unsuitable for a Q&A site.

This site cannot compete straight up with BGG (and shouldn't). This isn't a forum, and extensive back and forth discussions aren't handled well, by design. If folks want to talk about subjective stuff we should just direct them to BGG.

What we do better, is have peer reviewed answers to questions.

I think our traffic bears out what I've said here. This year, our general traffic is even, or perhaps a bit down. However visits by new people is continually climbing. **We need to retain these folks!**

What are folks coming here for? (Based on search query terms)

* Game Strategy
* Dominion (Agricola is 2nd)
* Where to play board games online

As you might guess, various Dominion strategy queries are the bee's knees. :)

Hard to say definitely but the top query that I think is recommendation based is about #40 this year - "quick set up board games for adults"
I believe recommendation questions were covered, primarily on Gaming.

<http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/the-pee-wee-herman-rule/>

> 
> If we get an excellent user who asks a *good, thoughtful* ["game like..."] question and sticks around in our community to participate, then it’s worth allowing it in those rare cases as a high quality “getting to know you” fun question.
> 
> 
> 

I would say these should be generally discouraged -- but if you see an *exceptionally* high quality one, indicative of a user that might ultimately be an asset to your community, it can *sometimes* be allowed in those circumstances.