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Once in a while we get questions about identifying breeds. Be it cats or dogs. As we know, those questions are out of scope for this site because there is no way to tell.

How about creating a general answer for those questions?

With these points:

  1. Why we cant tell what breed it is.
  2. What the situation is when you do know.
  3. Other option(s) to get a good guess, like, DNA (from reputable sources) testing or cat / dog show breed jury.
  • To clarify, you mean why don't we ask a question and provide an answer about how best to identify the breed of a dog / cat? – Henders♦ Mar 1 '18 at 9:36
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    @Henders, yes, a community question / answer on how best to identify the breed for your dog or cat. – Flummox - don't be evil SE Mar 1 '18 at 9:52
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    Maybe a community FAQ? Something like this ? – Journeyman Geek Mar 1 '18 at 10:11
  • @JourneymanGeek, that is an excellent idea! – Flummox - don't be evil SE Mar 1 '18 at 10:24
  • I've featured this so we'll get more of the communities thoughts about this. If you've got an opinion on this which isn't already covered by an existing answer, please post it below! – Henders♦ Mar 1 '18 at 11:08
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On Superuser we have a pretty well established process for this, though there's a significant need for moderator and user buy in.

We use the "community-faq" tag (And something like this would fit in there well as well) - and typically open up the process with a meta post like this one, and a certain degree of consensus.

Once that's done, a good answer covers a broad range of information on its own - as well as links to useful resources. Its also handy as a way to close other questions with the same topic - which is why consensus is handy.

What works well for SU might not work as well for pets - so I'd probably suggest seeing what the local mods, and the community think.

Here's an example of one I did on SU - I probably could have CWed it (can't remember why I didn't) but I've tried to tie in as much information as possible both from the site and off in my answer.

I've created the tag, and prepopulated it with a tag wiki excerpt and a few guidelines tailored to pets.

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I have to agree with Journeyman Geek here, I think a post which can cover a more general answer is the key here. However, I definitely think we need to have some kind of general guidelines to answer the following things:

  • What questions might work well in this context
  • What can be tagged up as a with a tag wiki explaining what it's about.
  • Community wiki is probably a judgement call, if they wrote a good answer, they deserve the rep.

Perhaps we could discuss these points in a follow-up meta post. I'm sure the community could think of some good example questions.

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