Why was "How can The Temple of Elementary Evil reliably protect itself against kinetic bombardment?" put on hold?

Question

So, I'm not sure why but this one was put on hold:

How can The Temple of Elementary Evil reliably protect itself against kinetic bombardment?

So, why was it put on hold?

Answer 1

Popularity != Suitability

This same question has been asked a number of times on Meta. Basically, "my question's popular with no comments but it got closed, what gives?"

1. Popularity has nothing to do with suitability. Especially on this site. We're creative and imaginative, which means the rules are much more important, not less. Just because a lot of people were tickled by the idea and question you presented doesn't mean your question automatically gets a pass when it comes to the rules. OPs are still expected to learn how to ask a good question. The difficulty with this (for both new and experienced users) is great enough that it justified creating the Sandbox.

2. You didn't need any comments. You could have clicked on the "close" link at any time to see how close voters were voting. They voted to close because they felt the question was too primarily opinion-based. If you visit the link I just gave you, it'll help you understand the key differences between how SE defines POB generally and how we define it specifically. In a nutshell (and per our Help Center), "... avoid asking subjective questions where ... every answer is equally valid...."¹ Such questions fall into the infinite list of things category, which is off-topic.

3. The kind of question you're asking is popular, and these kinds of questions are closed very frequently. The question type (which I'm going to add to the Catalog of Question Types, sometimes one must be slapped in the face by a haddock to get things done) is: How can X given Y? How to achieve a goal or condition is, indeed, a very popular type of question. The problem is that it's intrinsically POB. With rare exception, there are the proverbial thousand different ways to achieve the goal or condition. If the OP takes the time to specify all the restrictions, limitations, circumstances, etc., necessary to get just one answer, they usually answer the question themselves. The problem, therefore, is that "Y" must have two parts. (A) a clear and detailed explanation of the conditions that permit X to be evaluated and (B) an explanation of how you will judge the best answer (or, said another way, what justifies/constitutes the best answer). Part (B) changes the question into a finite list of things, which is on-topic. Regrettably, people usually provide (A), but they regularly fail to provide (B) and thus their question is closed. (See the previous POB link for details.)

Now, to be fair to your concerns, it wouldn't have hurt any one or more of the five close voters to give you some insight into why they thought your question was POB. However, (and this is important), SE does not require close voters to explain their votes. This is because the selected VTC reason is justification enough. But, thanks for bringing the question to Meta! It will serve to help others in the future.

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_{¹ SE won't change the POB text, which is why it's regrettably a "learning experience" to find the Meta post and understand the differences. I asked about modifying that text or simply disabling the POB VTC reason on Meta.StackExchange.com, the effort went nowhere.}