Can we ban and delete all the help-me-find-a-cassette-tape questions?

Question

• Christian story/song from the 1980s
• Looking for song or name of children’s Christian cassette tape!
• Looking for a cassette tape. Help please if possible
• Little drummer boy cassette
• I'm looking for the title of a Children's cassette, late 80s or early 90s
• Looking for Christian kids tape title with "Agapaopolis" on it
• https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/74008/6071
• Trying to locate a cassette tape from when I was a kid
• More...

Do these questions really provide any value to the community? Identify-this questions are problematic across the SE network. These ones seem especially bad because it doesn't really seem like we're equipped to answer them - most don't have answers - compared to the identification questions on, for example, the Sci Fi & Fantasy site, where there are enough knowledgeable people that most questions do get answers.

I fear the more of these we have, the more likely this site will come up in Google and other search engines when people are searching for Christian cassette tapes, and the more we'll see of them. Can we just purge them all?

Answer 1

The only reason I'd say no is because:

the more likely this site will come up in Google and other search engines when people are searching for Christian cassette tapes, and the more we'll see of them.

and this means people are asking questions on the site that probably don't have answers elsewhere, which is a good thing.

But for all your other reasons, spot on analysis. If we burned them now, nobody would shed a tear.

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However, I must attest that there are more kinds of Christian scholarship than Dogmatic or Systematic Theology. For instance, I've spent the last few weeks on Spotify analyzing Newsboys songs to identify exactly what makes 90's Newsboys awesome and 2000's Newsboys passe. It seems to me that it was precisely because they were also released on cassette that they were awesome.

Answer 2

Do these questions really provide any value to the community?

Given this statement about the Reason for Existence of the Christianity SE, it seems perhaps too obvious that these questions are of no value, and should be deleted...:

Like any library, Christianity Stack Exchange offers great information, but does not offer personalized advice,

I think being asked to search for antique cassette tapes for people falls under the “personalized advice” subcategory of “personal shopper.” I am actually shocked at the quantity of these requests. I agree with @curiousdannii that “the more of these we have, the more likely this site will come up in Google and other search engines when people are searching for Christian cassette tapes, and the more we'll see of them.” Which I don't see as a necessarily good thing: people seek this site for intellectual reasons, and I don’t see erroneous SEO as a genuine tactic for PR.

And to curiousdannii’s question,

Can we just purge them all?

I say, we must!

But purging them may not prevent this from continuing to happen. One characteristic of this site which I as a relatively new user have found difficult, is that access to the Welcome Tour, Help Center, etc... may seem perfectly obvious to seasoned users, but to a new user, that little tiny grey dot with a question mark in it, does not scream “come hither to learn what is and isn’t an appropriate question on this site!”

It’s been awhile since I first came here, but is there (and if not, could there be?) an automatically prompted link that takes new viewers to the tour and help center as soon as they come to the site?

It just seems to me that our Casette Shoppers are very sweet, well-meaning people who stumbled upon this place and have absolutely no idea where they are and what this place is for. When what they are really looking for is ebay.