Why was my question about figuring out physical differences between fantasy races put on hold for being to vague?

Question

I made a post called How to differentiate between elves and men where I asked about how to make elves physically different enough from mem that you could distinguish one from a man at a glance. I got a few answers that clearly understood what I was asking, yet it was put on hold for being unclear.

Why was there such a disconnect between the people that answered and the people that flagged the post? Just noting that nobody who actually discussed the post flagged it and 3 out of 4 of the people who answered understood the post exactly how I intended it to be understood. All but one of the people who discussed it understood what I was asking and none of the people who discussed it flagged it.

So why was this flagged? What could have caused half of the people to understand it clearly and half of the people to not understand what I was asking?

I would understand why none of them talked if there was another person who actually told me how it was unclear, but there wasn't. So now I'm being told I have a post that is hard to understand without being told why while also seeing that everyone who cared enough to comment understood mostly the way it was intended to be read.

All I am wanting to know is why so I can actually ask the question.

Answer 1

Often people don't comment themselves when there are already comments that they think sufficiently explain what is wrong with the question so they just upvote the comment and then proceed. Seeing that there are multiple votes on the comments from Alexander under your question this might be a possible explanation for the votes: the people who voted may have thought that you are looking for something created by God and therefore it depends on how you are envisioning God. This leads to missing facts, namely "What does God look like?" represented by the comments "Does God (in the image of whom everyone is created) have round or pointy ears?" and "I'm asking just because you seem to include this (image of God) stipulation. This may limit how diverse elves can be from men." The comments don't clearly talk about flagging or temporarily putting the question on hold and they are not quite helpful in finding out what is needed to add to make it clearer, but that's the only explanation I have.

Personally I think your edit was good at clarifying what you are searching. And I think the question is clear enough so I voted to reopen. You might want to think about editing the question in regards to the "If they are created in the physical image of God, what does God look like?" direction to explain that you are not looking for answers to the question "All people are made in the same physical image, but I want them to be different - how?" but for "I want multiple easily distinguishable human variants that can have offspring with each other - what are typical characteristics that fit the bill of being distinguishable but not too much difference to still produce offspring?" or something like that.

As an aside: it's recommended to wait at least 24 hours before accepting an answer to give everyone around the globe a chance to interact with your question and the answers. That may potentially increase the amount of answers (once it's not on hold anymore) and the quality of answers, as some people may think you have already found your solution and don't need any more help. You can accept and unaccept as often as you like. Just a tip for future questions.