Why Rio de Janeiro question open and upvoted, but not South East Asia seaside golf course?

Question

Why is Identify a city by the mountains and water body (probably Rio de Janeiro) open and upvoted, when Google found the location in 10 seconds? I screen shot just page 1 cause it already has answer, but Google returned over 10 pages. I remember some users commenting trolling or bad faith on this kind of question. I remember Willeke commenting some where that you have to trust photographers.

In comparison, I remember some [identify-this] question for some sea shore golf course in South East Asia with a man and islands at the back that got downvoted. I remember Googling that picture, but zero results. I can't find that question, and I'm assuming it's deleted. But why? I trust it's obvious why I'm confused. Why open and upvote a question on location Google can locate in 10 seconds, but close and downvote a question on location that Google can't locate?

Answer 1

Two major differences come to mind immediately:

The first difference: In the Rio question, the location being asked about is of the appropriate level of specificity (a city) to be identifiable from the image (which shows a city). The variations in geography shown in the image also provide an appropriate level of information to make the additional question (the approximate location the image was taken from) reasonably answerable. I don't remember the "south east asia seaside golf course" question you mentioned, but I do remember another golf course question asked by - I'm quite certain, given your interest - the same person. Let's take that for comparison: it wanted us to locate a point somewhere vaguely near a city (not shown in the image), based on a photograph of a fireplace that happened to have some distant mountains in the background. Quite a big difference.

As I said, I don't think I saw the specific golf course question you're asking about. But based on your description of the seaside golf course picture sounds like it was probably a similarly unsuitable image with few or no distinctive, recognisable features. As a result, a request to identify the specific location within the absurdly large stated area "south east asia" would be nothing other than a wild goose chase.

The second difference: (and, perhaps, the more important one) is that the Rio question was asked by a user who seems to be legitimate. The golf course question was asked by an obvious sockpuppet who keeps using various accounts to ask the same stupid "I found this photo on reddit, there are probably dozens or even hundreds of other spots in the general area that look basically the same, but tell me the exact location of this one somehow, for some reason" question over and over. Then they act surprised that each one gets the same negative reaction as the ones before it, as if doing the same thing over and over is somehow supposed to produce different results. And then they come to meta with yet another account. An account that has done almost literally nothing in its entire history, except argue in bad faith (while pretending to be a disinterested third party) about those questions. For some reason they still seem to think they're being subtle about this, despite the fact that: a) numerous meta posts from various users make it clear that everybody sees through them, and b) I've personally told them directly at least three times now that they aren't. Frankly it's insulting how stupid "they" must think we are.

Answer 2

Why open and upvote a question on location Google can locate in 10 seconds, but close and downvote a question on location that Google can't locate?

I'm not sure which other question you're referring to, but we've seen a lot of low-quality identify-this questions lately, often a couple of them by the same user, and the community isn't sure whether they're posted in good faith. The Rio de Janeiro question was posted by a member who is in good standing and showed some research efforts. Perhaps more important: because the picture is from a wallpaper, it's more likely to be useful to other users, unlike identifying locations in holiday pictures. After all, we're here to build some kind of library.

Answer 3

But why?

Unfortunately, votes are more random than they should be on this website. I've seen many cases where a question whose answer could be found in a few seconds in Google is upvoted, and cases where a difficult question is downvoted. Whenever we ask voters to justify their votes, people tend to hide being the votes' anonymity and freedom to vote whichever way they want. Also note that a first downvote tends to attract more downvotes (many people have issues thinking by themselves).