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While we want to discourage list questions in general, it seems there are potentially legitimate ones that we might want to keep (not withstanding other issues with the questions I raised in a comment below the question).

Assuming we want to keep this question, or even a more specific variant (What breed of dog is best suited to my specific circumstances), how do we want to deal with them?

At the moment, the question has two answers, one suggesting two breeds of dogs, the other ten, with one overlapping. I don't think that's a good way to answer the question as it makes it impossible to pick one answer over the other (which is one reason why list questions are usually discouraged).

So should we clean up this question and make each breed a separate answer with an added quick description of why a particular breed is particularly suitable to young children?

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  • possible duplicate of What do you think about list questions?
    – user87
    Commented Oct 11, 2013 at 11:34
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    @Skippy That question, which is also the one I link to when I say "we want to discourage list questions in general", asks about whether or not, or in which circumstances, to allow list questions. This one asks, given the fact that we might consider the odd list question acceptable, how do we deal with said list question when it arises.
    – ThomasH
    Commented Oct 11, 2013 at 13:31

2 Answers 2

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In this particular case, I would advocate for allowing only one breed per answer and encourage the poster to explain why they think the breed is particularly suitable. That way, the community can upvote individual breeds and the most suitable hopefully rises to the top.

Though I admit this doesn't address the more general case and might not be an option on all such questions.

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Here's what I've seen on some other sites in the rare cases where a list question is acceptable: one community-wiki answer, so everybody can edit and nobody gets the reputation. That seems like a good approach here too.

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    I don't think this would be a viable option in this case (Which dog breeds are most suitable for small children?) as you'll get one big list of each and every dog breed with no way to discern what is seen by the community as the best one, but it might be a suitable option for other types of list questions that we want to allow.
    – ThomasH
    Commented Oct 11, 2013 at 13:32
  • That's fair. It sounds like the dog-breed question isn't really a list question in the classic sense, but rather one that will have many, many answers.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Oct 11, 2013 at 14:20

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