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I made a question here: How up to date is the Man from seat 61?

For some reason the question was put on hold. I can even understand that at a first glance the question might considered too broad. But I got some really good answers telling about the update rate of the website and explaining how the update process works including the time-stamp information.

When this happens why do people insist in considering the questions too broad?

In general, in this situations some time should be given to a question. I think the answers will prove (or not) if a question is too broad or not.

2 Answers 2

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I voted to reopen. For starters the question isn't broad. It might be opinion-based since the answers would rely on anecdotes by people who actually used the website and found it reliable/not reliable. However we received an answer by the man himself, explaining how he goes about to keep up the reliability by updating the site on a constant basis.

What can be done to improve the on-topicness of the question it to reword it to something like: How up to date is the Man in Seat61?, to better fit the accepted answer.

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    +1, I voted to close because the question as stated was essentially opinion-based. "How reliable" is inherent subjective; we can't say "Seat61.com scores somewhere between 650 and 720 reliability units (0.65-0.72 kilorels, or 26-28 BRUs in the US)." Many, perhaps most how questions are problematic in the same way— how easy, how comfortable, how busy, how careful: rarely is a frame of reference provided. How up to date? is a big improvement, because it can be answered without resorting to anecdote or conjecture into the questioner's standards.
    – choster
    Commented Jun 25, 2015 at 17:56
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    Theoretically you can measure "how reliable". Take all information from the site, check if they are correct and then you can make a statement like: 75% reliable. Commented Jun 25, 2015 at 21:55
  • You'd need a statistical tests with a 95% reliability to be precise. 75% is unreliable. :)
    – JoErNanO Mod
    Commented Jun 25, 2015 at 21:58
  • @JoErNanO That's also subjective. :)
    – reirab
    Commented Jun 27, 2015 at 19:09
  • @reirab Maybe so. But repeatable. :)
    – JoErNanO Mod
    Commented Jun 27, 2015 at 21:53
  • I believe the proper answer is "yes". Commented Jun 28, 2015 at 20:40
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After 2 reopen votes, I cast another reopen vote and the question is now reopened. As @JoErNanO already mentioned, the question is not too broad. It is quite specific and definitively also not off-topic. Concerning the opinion-based problem. The question might elicit a lot of opinions or anecdotal evidences, but it would (at least theoretically) also be possible to evaluate the reliability objectively.

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