Do questions have to be "good questions" to not be put on-hold/closed?

Question

I have seen many questions that have been put on-hold or closed with the message:

"This question is missing context or other details: Please improve the question by providing additional context, which ideally includes your thoughts on the problem and any attempts you have made to solve it. This information helps others identify where you have difficulties and helps them write answers appropriate to your experience level."

This links to the meta post "How to ask a good question." This post seems to be a great guide for new users and older users alike to make their questions more valuable to the community. This seems to be a trove of wisdom, but

Is it the standing policy of this community to allow a question only if they meet every single one of these requirements?

Aren't there questions that don't meet every single point of that post to the letter that are still of value to this community?

I didn't become active on this site until relatively recently, and when I joined and began asking questions I read the Help Center page "What topics can I ask about here?". This page also redirects back the the post about asking "good questions", which I read and try to abide by. But the Help Center does not say that questions are only allowed if they meet the guidelines of that post. Instead, it gives different requirements.

Recently I've been frustrated by posts that I have wanted to answer, but have been placed on-hold or closed because they did not meet the "good questions" guidelines perfectly, but they did meet the requirements defined in the Help Center. Many of these questions were good, interesting questions that I wanted to answer.

I understand that the issue of PSQ's has been raging since way before my time, but is it community policy to put on-hold/close questions that don't meet the requirements of the "good answer" post? If it is, why doesn't the Help Center say this? It seems to be enforced by a small number of mods and users with high reputation arbitrarily and capriciously.

Recent example: Question

This question was asked by a new user and is similar in nature to other questions with the tag "automata" or "formal-languages". Questions like this in these tags typically get quality answers. However, the question was quickly put on hold for lack of context. When another user edited the question to clarify a definition (which was clear to most users of the tag, but maybe not to the users who voted to close), the edit was rolled back.

The question, while not providing motivation or the poster's work, still gives plenty of context to make it answerable. The question is not a groundbreaking question, but it is certainly of interest and might be answered in a neat way and be of benefit to others. I don't know if the poster will edit the question or choose not to. I don't know if the poster has given up and will never look at the question again. But either way I think multiple users would like to answer it and it would be of value to the community and future users.

I flagged it for moderator attention (as this page explicitly tells me to do if a moderator voted to close), but I was told that the flag was not the appropriate action, and to ask on meta or C.R.U.D.E. (which I only recently learned about).

Answer 1

I believe that this issue of what and what's not on-topic, or what counts as a question deserving closure has cropped up too many times in MSE.

Is it the standing policy of this community to allow a question only if they meet every single one of these requirements?

First of all, let's go through all the reasons for closure.

• Duplicate: this may not have anything to do with the quality of the question nor the context it has

• Off topic:

  • Not about mathematics: this would probably be addressed to questions that are irrelevant to mathematics, such as this one where no mathematics is involved, just letters forming words of profanity. It could also reference questions that involve nonsensical maths, like proving the Collatz conjecture in a few steps (unfortunately I can't find the link to this question at the moment).

  • Missing context: I suppose that this is the one that you are concerned with the most. In just a meta answer, it is impossible for me to list out everything that counts as missing context, but I will give a few examples.

    1) Questions that do not show the asker's attempt, and are a blatant copy of the exercise problem. Such questions usually are of the form I, II or III. From my experience, this type is the most common. This is sometimes known as a PSQ - problem statement question.

    2) Questions that provide some context, but very insufficient. For example, questions on definite integrals where the user said that they used the hint for substitution/by parts as given in their textbook but do not show their calculations would be under this category. This is where some users dispute with other users, arguing that context is provided. A solution would obviously be to discuss with the asker, but it all comes down to whether the user takes it on board.

  • Seeking personal advice: these types of questions are not as common as the first two, but it should be relatively easy to identify these.

• Unclear what is asked: this is reserved for questions that do not ask a question, or if what is asked is very hard to know. Sometimes this can be resolved by adding the proof-verification tag.

• Too broad/primarily opinion-based: I suppose that this is self-explanatory, given the descriptions for it.

Now if you look at all of these rationales for closure, it is not actually that hard to meet all these criteria. In short, the answer to the title of your post is yes.

Aren't there questions that don't meet every single point of that post to the letter that are still of value to this community?

There are! For example, there are ancient questions on MSE that are preserved due to 'historical reasons' like this one and this one. And there are also instances where the answers given are so insightful that it is not worth deleting the post, but instead closure suffices.

Regarding your linked question, it is a very poor one, and would definitely fit into section 1) of missing context. Even though I have rolled back the edit to include the definition of a Nerode equivalence, the question still lacks significant context, as the asker has not bothered trying to attempt it themselves. Hence I do not understand why, as of writing this post, that there are 4 reopen votes.

Answer 2

Is it the standing policy of this community to allow a question only if they meet every single one of these requirements?

Questions should strive to meet the guidelines laid out in the thread you mentioned. To say a question is only acceptable when every single point is met would be an overstatement. I'd say each point could be factored in to get an overall appreciation of the quality of the post, and then it's a judgment call.

The weights assigned to the different aspects are not uniform over different users. As for context specifically, the list in that answer gives examples of how context can be provided. There the idea is not that each and every point must be addressed; this would often not be possible. But there has to be some meaningful context.

That also means, when the feedback is that there is too little context. It'd make sense to add more context, and not to question the feedback.

As for the specific wording, a reformulation is in the planning. The new one will most likely read:

This question is missing context or other details: Please provide additional context, which ideally explains why the question is relevant to you and our community. Some forms of context include: background and motivation, relevant definitions, source, possible strategies, your current progress, why the question is interesting or important, etc.

To formulate such messages is somewhat tricky, not only but also as they must not be too long. In that sense I want to stress that this closing-message, and any closing message, is just a text-snippet that communicates roughly what the issue is. Finer points of the standing policies are documented elsewhere (and some arguably are standing practice that is not codified anywhere).

It seems to be enforced by a small number of mods and users with high reputation arbitrarily and capriciously.

It's enforced as resources permit. If more would join the effort, it could happen even more consistently and some confusions might be avoided. Of course, errors can happen, too. But, in my perception a majority of (perceived) large inconsistencies is due to some questions "getting through quality-control unchecked".

Answer 3

This will be a short answer, since I generally agree with what quid and TheSimpliFire have already said, but I want to note several things before moving on to why I wrote a new answer.

1. This is a long standing policy on this site, insofar as a highly upvoted meta proposal counts as a policy.
2. As TheSimpliFire pointed out, it's not hard to meet the standards for a question. Moreover, I'd like to add that if the question itself doesn't meet those standards, but you want to answer it, then (assuming it's possible) you can edit it yourself to meet those standards. That way you won't have to worry about closure. See here for suggestions on how to do so, from yet another old meta discussion.

Now the main reason I wanted to add an answer is to explain why I think context is important to make questions and answers valuable.

While coherent PSQs can be "answered" in the sense that the mathematical content of the question can be resolved, many times these questions are asked by new users with limited mathematical background. In many areas, the answer an expert (or simply someone with a more sophisticated viewpoint) gives to a question that resolves the mathematical content of the question will in fact be incomprehensible to someone with limited background. This grossly limits the utility of the answer. In a sense, the answer doesn't address the actual question that the questioner wanted to ask. This is why context is important. It allows us to understand where and why the questioner is confused and address the root cause of confusion. This also makes the question and answer much more valuable to SE as a repository of knowledge, because many points of confusion and misconceptions are very common among mathematical learners, so a question that explains clearly where someone is confused and an answer that makes it clear how to resolve the confusion is much more valuable than just the solution to a mathematical problem.

Anyway, Willie Wong gave a much better, longer, and more detailed explanation of what context is and why it is important here, so I'll end with sharing that link.