My first attempt at a standard for directed prompts would be the following: a player direction should be added to a prompt when there's ambiguity as to what extra information the question requires. For example, let's say a player buzzed on the aforementioned tossup with "Muslims" and received a prompt. In this case, from the player's perspective, there are several possible answers the question might be looking for, including "Uyghurs," "Hui people," "Muslim women," et cetera. The direction serves to disambiguate the prompt so that the player doesn't have to read the writer's mind. When the only possible direction would be "Can you be more specific," including that explicitly is unnecessary. No need for a direction on a tossup on John Quincy Adams.
Common use cases for directed prompts might include:
- When a prompt is asking the player to be less specific
- Compound or 'Description acceptable' answerlines
- Common-links where a different answer fits some of the clues
- Myth questions on gods who are sometimes conflated
- Science stuff
Please add more examples that I've missed, of which I'm sure there are many. As an old, though, I feel obligated to warn against potential misuse of directed prompts. I'd like to propose the following guideline: a directed prompt should not be the only way to figure out what kind of answer the question is looking for. If a question would be completely opaque without directed prompts, the editor should not cover over that issue with them; a "note to players" preceding the tossup is much preferable. For an example of what I mean, let's consider a hypothetical tossup on "blue dragons." A player might recognize that a clue applies to "dragons," but not know that the dragon being described is blue. There is no way for this player to know, before buzzing, that they have insufficient information to answer the question. On the directed prompt, then, they will neg. In cases like these, it would be preferable to start the question with a note indicating the question is asking for both an animal and a color.
This is most of what I've been considering; please discuss!