Here are some guidelines to help people decide to cast close/reopen votes as well as help you if your question was placed on temporary hold and remains closed.
- First - look at whether the question is really about opinions or debate or discussion. We close questions that are primarily opinion based, so "Why did Apple X" are historically quintessential questions that are opinion based.
- Look for the practical use case being presented. If the question is critical or even ranty, that can be edited out if needed.
- Even very well reasoned questions about historicalj decision points lack a practical item to be solved and might work better on a site about how to run a company or how to engineer a solution as opposed to here where we focus on people that use Apple products to do things (and we don’t try to be a forum or Wikipedia or fan folklore site).
In some cases above, post are often thinly veiled straw men or rants that need substantial edits to removing the debate language and arguments if that allows a real issue to be surfaced and answered. Polite criticism is always welcome here. I enjoy seeing withering shade being cast within the bounds of proper etiquette, so when you want to rip someone or something publicly, do it with style, please.
However, that criticism has to set the stage for a real problem that a real user of Apple products is facing. If the question is merely hypothetical and lacks compelling practical application, then it should be closed until it can be edited. Adding research about what Apple has or has not done helps, but in the end open questions need to state clearly the problem that is to be solved Otherwise, discussions should be held in chat or on another internet user forum of some sort as opposed to this narrowly focused Question and Answer platform.
Here are guidelines that can help you add documented research and clarify a practical question so that we can reopen questions that will allow reasoned answers to be offered.
In a nutshell, here is a template for fixing all the above close reasons if a question you like has been labeled "not practical" or "opinion based" or "off topic":
- I am angry/confused/delighted because: document clearly what Apple has done, has announced, has not done, has not announced.
- Document your efforts to solve your dilemma. (n.b. saying you searched everywhere and tried everything you know isn't documentation. It's lack of effort and shows how little time and thought you spent on organizing your search strategy)
- Frame in some detail what precisely you expect to be able to do with the knowledge you seek. Give numbers, facts, timelines so that this doesn't look like you asking for opinions and instead asking for experience and facts to move your problem a step or two towards resolution if it cannot be solved in a few paragraphs.
- If you can rephrase your question so that the premis is “given that Apple has done X (and link to a reference clearly documenting this), how do I then do Y?” often makes it very easy to realize if the question is on or off topic.
