In July this year, rwallace posted a question about the Largest ratio between base and maximum RAM, which was well received. Earlier this month, the same user posted a question about the Maximum size of 8-bit computer cartridges, which has gathered several close-votes.
What's our policy on these sorts of questions? Is there a significant difference between the two questions that I haven't noticed?
My take on this is that they are simply trivia questions.
Although I would consider them to be on-topic, they are of interest to a very limited audience and provide little benefit to the site. For example, they don't help anyone who is trying to restore or maintain an old computer system.
I don't believe that the two questions that you have linked are significantly different, although the latter is broader and harder to answer definitively.
Your question is a good one and I hope we get a number of views expressed here.
Well, these questions are stupid, funny and revealing at the same time - and more important, they tickle a certain nerd sense. One that will make people eager to shine and steal the show. I can't throw a stone, as this includes me as well.
Like @Chenmunka, I would give them some credit as beeing on topic, but not helpful in a technical way. They satisfy a shallow curiosity of the BuzzFeed kind.
I try to either use them as a hook to provide some basic understanding or debunk them as the nonsense they are (nicly both citd questions also show the atempts I tried :))
Like with many other borderline questions it's hard to kick them out easy. I think we should give alike questions a (short) time to see if someone can come up with a good way to transform it into knowledge. This ofc, does not include questions about ponies.
No, because my computer was always better than your computer … ;-)
Unless the questions are explicitly time constrained, there will eventually be someone who adds gigabit ethernet to their Oric Atmos, or a SATA interface for their Sinclair Spectrum. Similarly, the questions will become a race to the bottom of obscure systems and peripherals. Then, of course, there's the Amigan problem, sometimes called the Amiga Syndrome, where historically Amiga owners have vastly inflated their machines' capability:
… whenever anyone discusses computers, the stereotypical Amiga user will always claim that the Amiga is a better, faster, cheaper, more user-friendly computer than any other, ever, and any opposing view is treated as treachery, oppression, and a declaration of nuclear war.— Advocating Linux, Lars Wirzenius, 16 August 1996.
