There is nothing in the FAQ or here on meta that specifically says these questions cannot be asked, and I think some other sites like SO tolerate them to a degree, but perhaps the expert focus here should make us lean towards saying no to them?
Shall we close these as off-topic?
If the question is specific and answerable (i.e. passes the 'not a real question' test) and is on-topic per the FAQ then it would be on topic. One could probably envisage questions within these criteria that could be viewed as trivia in a subjective judgement.
However, the FAQ does not explicitly include 'database trivia' as being in scope, and the only redeeming feature of a trivia question has is that it's answerable. The PostgreSQL turtle question is certainly not within the definition of any of the major categories within the FAQ, as it is sociological in nature and discusses a cultural issue in Japan.
The important point is the cultural significance of the elephant motif, not the fact that the PostgreSQL team chose to re-brand the system in Japan with a turtle. It is almost completely immaterial to any technical database design, development or admininistrative concern.
The odd 'interesting' question is not going to hurt dba.se, although polls, code golf and various other types of populist questions are discouraged as they dilute the value of the site and provide opportunities for gaming rep.
I would consider occasional 'interesting' postings acceptable by the grace of the user base, but spamming populist questions should be considered disruptive behaviour at best, and rep gaming at worst. Spamming large numbers of poor quality or off-topic posts is widely considered to be unacceptable behaviour on the SE network (with good reason), and there is no reason for dba.se to be any more tolerant of that.
While interesting, trivia questions are not explicitly on-topic on the dba.se site, and sit in a subjective area where the discretion of the moderator community has some leeway to make a judgment call based on other qualities of the question.
Let's make it a simple rule that 'trivia' is always off-topic on dba.se - even if this sort of question is borderline for SO and/or other sites on the network, we have an 'expert' focus and culture, and trivia is not going to attract the kind of contributors we need more of, and of course is unlikely to help anyone with their 'real-world' database problems
Please note this is not necessarily my personal opinion on the subject - I just feel that the community needs to be able to vote on this option
Isn't this kind of like homework? It can be very tough to draw the line and determine that a question was intended to be trivia even if it sounds like trivia.
I don't think there is a way to make a blanket policy that all questions that seem like trivia to one person should be closed. Let the community decide, or have a bar (ridiculous trivia vs. borderline).
There are other types of questions that are much more obvious as speculative or not valuable - for example the question about the SQL Server 2012 release date. If the question was asked today, "When was SQL Server 2012 released?" - would you consider that trivia? What if it had extra context (like my developer said he did such and such in February in production, and that couldn't be possible because SQL Server 2012 wasn't released yet)? What about the codename for SQL Server 2012? There are all kinds of things that could look to you like trivia but serve a more important purpose to the OP and to other curious readers (e.g. someone searching to compile information about SQL Server code names or release dates). These are things that are interesting to a DBA, in a different way than Ferraris and sushi are interesting to a DBA.
I think that questions that involve specific knowledge of a corporate or body politic (hereafter referred to as company)'s internal members ... should not be asked here.
If you want to know the internal decisions made by a company, such as "why did the company choose this license type", that question can only be answered by the company, and we should refer those questions to the company in question. Of course, if the company has gone out of business, then it may be something that would be welcomed on Wikipedia.
If an employee of the company wants to answer the question, they should be able to point to publicly available company documentation that explains the trivia, and if the company chooses not to make such decisions public, then that means that no official stance can ever be known. That only leaves subjective answers, in my opinion.
I think that questions of code or application or framework nature are perfectly welcome. The reason for that is because trivia of code can still be tested, or demonstrated.
Unfortunately, this is not a Democracy, and Jeff says so. Trivia questions are permitted. Game over debate.
