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Yesterday I asked a big-list question (Examples of errors in computational combinatorics results). The question is naturally big-list because it asks for various examples. Now I am not quite familiar with the community understanding of what is CW, but the big-list tag help says "Such a question should typically be in Community Wiki mode (CW)" [emphasis mine].

However, one answerer was (IMHO quite understandably) surprised and somewhat disappointed that their answer is also automatically CW. I feel a bit bad for this answerer, who provided a very well-thought answer, which must have taken nontrivial effort. Yet no reputation benefit because CW. I could, of course, grant them a small bounty to remedy the situation.

But this begs the question: should the question have been CW after all? I understand that at least one rationale for big-list questions being CW is "[to allow] the voting system to be used more effectively to rank the list without damaging the reputation of users who give bad responses." (from a comment by Carlo Beenakker to a 2018 Meta question). Is this the key issue and does it apply here, or are there other reasons for big-list being CW?

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    $\begingroup$ The general tradition on MO is that big-list questions, or in general questions which do not have a single correct answer, should usually be CW. Also, questions which are rather soft questions than precise mathematical questions should usually be CW. These cannot be exact "hard" rules, of course. $\endgroup$
    – Stefan Kohl Mod
    Commented Jan 12, 2023 at 9:19
  • $\begingroup$ I guess the tag (specific-question) might be suitable here - at least if this is meant mainly to be about this particular question. (Not if you want to have a general discussion - and this question is used just as an example. See also the tag-info for this tag.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Commented Jan 12, 2023 at 10:56

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