Frequently Asked Questions

collapse | the above section is quoted for convenience from the full FAQ, below.


Movies & TV - Stack Exchange is for Movie & TV enthusiasts and experts alike!

If your question generally covers …

  • Analysis of content or theme of all forms of Movies/TV
  • Identifying a Movie or TV series (see below for details)
  • Questions about a Movie/TV show's production.
  • The works of a director / an actor / a writer related to Movies/TV

Movies also includes Made-For-TV movies, Direct-to-DVD, and Mini-Series.

Please note that the following subjects are considered off-topic here:

  • Distribution
  • Movie/TV purchasing/viewing locations
  • The operation of playing a movie whether it be digital or physical format.
  • Unimportant trivia that does not add to the understanding or appreciation of the title.
  • TV news and current affairs
  • A title's release date or rumors about a specific title or series.
  • Opinions about or recommendations for a movie or TV show

Spoilers

Please note that spoilers are allowed here and may be out in the open. Read at your own risk.

The use of spoiler markup should be kept to a minimum, or not used at all if it is clear what Movie or TV Show is being discussed in the question. Use common sense and apply spoiler markup to cover only aspects of your post that you would think might be unexpected, such as references to other movies.

Spoiler tags will be deleted from questions as nearly every question reveals details about a movie or TV show.

While we encourage you to be aware of spoilers in our questions, we make every effort to remove spoilers from Question Titles which is one part of the site that does not have mark-up capabilities and is out in the open. Also, please refer to this meta post on how to keep specific tags from your view.

Identify-This-X Questions

Identification questions are currently on-topic for this site. Please try to give as much detail as possible:

  • Where you watched the movie or TV show
  • When you watched the movie or TV show
  • Any idea of how old it was
  • Whether it was animated or not
  • Any distinctive detail

See this question to get a feel of what we expect from a well rounded Identify-This-* question.

Identify-This questions are of limited use to other users of the site, and are asking people to spend some time identifying the Movie or TV show, so it is the responsibility of the person asking the question to try to answer clarifications within a reasonable amount of time, certainly within a day or so.

Identify-This questions may be deleted if it is considered that they are unanswerable and the person asking is not answering clarification comments. Questions from unregistered users unanswered after 2 weeks are liable to be deleted. Questions lacking in research, i.e. if a question is easily answered from an Actor's name on IMDB or Wikipedia will be closed.

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.

If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)

To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …

  • every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”
  • your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”
  • there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”
  • we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”
  • it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”

(The above section was adapted from MetaFilter’s FAQ. For more detail, see six guidelines for great subjective questions.)

When you post a new question, other users will almost immediately see it and try to provide good answers. This often happens in a matter of minutes, so be sure to check back frequently when your question is still new for the best response.

Answers to your questions and comment replies to your posts will appear as a red indicator in your global inbox at the top left of every page; click it to view them.

unread inbox messages

If your question needs clarification, you will see comments in smaller type below your question.

comments

If other users ask you for more information in the comments, edit your question using the edit link just below your original question.

editing

Providing clarification promptly will help get you the best answers.

As you see new answers to your question, vote up the helpful ones by clicking the upward pointing arrow to the left of the answer.

answer voting

Answers are normally sorted by vote score so the most highly voted answers float to the top. Other users will also vote on the answers to your question.

When you have decided which answer is the most helpful to you, mark it as the accepted answer by clicking on the check box outline to the left of the answer.

accept an answer

This lets other people know that you have received a good answer to your question. Doing this is helpful because it shows other people that you’re getting value from the community. (And if you don’t do this, people will often politely ask you to go back and accept answers for more of your questions!)

Civility is required at all times; rudeness will not be tolerated.

Treat others with the same respect you’d want them to treat you. We’re all here to learn together. Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know. Bring your sense of humor.

Above all, be honest. If you see misinformation, vote it down. Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong. Provide better answers of your own. Best of all — edit and improve the existing questions and answers!

You can ask questions, answer, and suggest edits as an anonymous user, much like Wikipedia. There are some things you won’t be able to do on the site without registering, such as vote. But it’s easy to register.

If you have a registered account on any other sites in our network with at least 200 reputation, you will receive a +100 point reputation bonus when you first log in.

login

Once logged in, you can gain other key privileges through reputation, most crucially the right to vote.

This site was created through the open democratic process at Stack Exchange Area 51, and it is currently in beta. The site is still in the process of being defined and constructed, so a temporary placeholder design will be used until the site is fully formed and ready to leave beta. Once the site is no longer beta it will have a unique design built with input from the community – see our meta-discussion site if you have ideas or feedback!

Reputation is a rough measurement of how much the community trusts you; it is earned by convincing your peers that you know what you’re talking about. Basic use of the site, including asking questions, answering, and suggesting edits, does not require any reputation at all. But the more reputation you earn, the more privileges you gain.

comments

answer is voted up +10
question is voted up +5
answer is accepted +15 (+2 to acceptor)
question is voted down -2
answer is voted down -2 (-1 to voter)

A maximum of 40 votes can be cast per user per day, however, to reach the maximum you must vote on at least 10 questions. You can earn a maximum of 200 reputation per day. Please note that votes for posts marked “community wiki” do not generate any reputation, while accepted answers and bounty awards are not subject to the daily reputation limit.

The other way to gain reputation is by suggesting edits to existing posts as a new registered user. Each edit will be peer reviewed, and if it is accepted, you will earn +2 reputation. You can only earn a maximum of +1000 total reputation through suggested edits, however.

Amass enough reputation points and you will be granted additional privileges:

(note that reputation requirements have been relaxed slightly for the duration of the public beta)

† you can always comment on your questions and answers, and any answers to questions you’ve asked, even with 1 rep.

If you are an experienced Stack Exchange network user with 200 or more reputation on at least one site, you will receive a starting +100 reputation bonus to get you past basic new user restrictions. This will happen automatically on all current Stack Exchange sites where you have an account, and on any other Stack Exchange sites at the time you log in.

At the high end of this reputation spectrum there is little difference between users with high reputation and ♦ moderators. That is very much intentional. We don’t run this site. The community does.

First, make sure you’ve asked a good question. To get better answers, you may need to put additional effort into your question. Edit your question to provide status and progress updates. Document your own continued efforts to answer your question. This will naturally bump your question and get more people interested in it.

If, despite your best efforts, you feel questions aren’t getting good answers, you can help by offering a bounty.

start a bounty

Slice off anywhere from +50 to +500 of your own hard-earned reputation and attach it to any question as a bounty.

bounty interface

The bountied question will appear with a special indicator in all question lists, and it will also be visible on the home page Featured tab for 7 days.

Click the bounty award icon next to each answer to permanently award your bounty to the answerer.

bounty award icon

There are a few other rules around bounties:

  • Questions must be at least 2 days old to be eligible for a bounty. There can only be 1 active bounty per question at any given time.
  • Users must have at least 75 reputation to offer a bounty, and may only have a maximum of 3 active bounties at any given time.
  • The bounty period lasts 7 days. Bounties must have a minimum duration of at least 1 day. After the bounty ends, there is a grace period of 24 hours to manually award the bounty.
  • If you do not award your bounty within 7 days (plus the grace period), the highest voted answer created after the bounty started with at least 2 upvotes will be awarded half the bounty amount. If there's no answer meeting that criteria, the bounty is not awarded to anyone.
  • If the bounty was started by the question owner, and the question owner accepts an answer during the bounty period, and the bounty expires without an explicit award – we assume the bounty owner liked the answer they accepted and award it the full bounty amount at the time of bounty expiration.

In any case, you will always give up the amount of reputation specified in the bounty, so if you start a bounty, be sure to follow up and award your bounty to the best answer!

As an additional bonus, bounty awards are immune to the daily reputation cap and community wiki mode.

Questions that are not a good fit for this site may be voted closed by experienced community members. Closed questions cannot be answered, but are eligible for improvement (and eventual re-opening) through editing, voting, and commenting. See How to Ask for guidance on editing your question to improve it.

close vote

Common reasons a question may be closed include:

  • exact duplicate
    This question covers exactly the same content as earlier questions on this topic; its answers may be merged with another identical question.

  • off topic
    Questions on Movies & TV Stack Exchange are expected to relate to movies and tv within the scope defined in the FAQ. Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope. Read more about closed questions here.

  • not constructive
    As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.

  • not a real question
    It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

  • too localized
    This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

Users with 500 reputation can cast up to 24 close votes per day. When a question reaches 5 close votes, it is marked as closed, and will no longer accept answers. Closed questions may be opened by casting reopen votes in the same manner. However, you may only vote to close or reopen a question once.

Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.

Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see How to Ask.

Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …

  • commentary on the question or other answers
  • asking another, different question
  • “thanks!” or “me too!” responses
  • exact duplicates of other answers
  • barely more than a link to an external site
  • not even a partial answer to the actual question

If you wish to improve an existing answer, click edit. For additional guidance, see How to Answer.

Each post and comment has a small flag link. Click the flag link to let us know about problems and we'll follow up.

flag this post for serious problems or moderator attention

We actively moderate our community, but we need your help to do so. Anything that is getting consistently flagged by our community members will be investigated and followed up on. And of course you can always email us directly if you feel the matter is urgent.

Most importantly, don't feed the trolls! Replying to abusive, off-topic, or inappropriate content only encourages it – whereas flagging allows removal without providing undue attention.

Please don’t use signatures or taglines in your posts, or they will be removed.

Every post you make is already “signed” with your standard user card, which links directly back to your user page.

user card

Your user page belongs to you — fill it with information about your interests, links to stuff you’ve worked on, or whatever else you like!

All contributions are licensed under Creative Commons and this site is collaboratively edited, like Wikipedia. If you see something that needs improvement, click edit and help us make it so!

All edits are tracked in a public revision history. To view revisions, click the edit date on the post.

show revisions

If you are not comfortable with the idea of your contributions being collaboratively edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you.

Be careful, because the community frowns on overt self-promotion and tends to vote it down and flag it as spam. Post good, relevant answers, and if some (but not all) happen to be about your product or website, so be it. However, you must disclose your affiliation in your answers.

If a huge percentage of your posts include a mention of your product or website, you're probably here for the wrong reasons. Our advertising rates are quite reasonable; contact our ad sales team for details. We also offer free community promotion ads for open source projects and non-profit organizations.

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search box

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For the complete list of advanced search options, with examples, visit the search page.

If you’re looking for excruciating detail, our meta-discussion site hosts a section of constantly evolving frequently asked questions that document everything about the site. Or, maybe you’d just like to learn a little more about us?