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I flagged the following two questions as primarily opinion based a while ago and my flags were declined. My question is... how are these questions not primarily opinion based?:

Which city to visit in Mexico closest to Texas border

What are Ireland's top places to visit with a toddler?

"Too broad" would be another good closure reason imho.

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    You can't flag as opinion based, you can vote to close as such. They aren't declined - if they take more than x length of time with out garnering enough supporting votes, then it goes away.
    – Mark Mayo
    Commented Aug 9, 2015 at 12:05
  • @MarkMayo Yes one can. If one lacks the rep to cast close votes (I think 3k ?) then you can flag for "Should be closed -> Primarily Opinion Based". Neubert clearly did this, and had flags returned as "declined" rather than "helpful" by whoever reviewed them.
    – CMaster
    Commented Aug 10, 2015 at 12:31
  • @CMaster oh hey, I'd not niced that menu, either that's new or I've never gone that route. Are you sure it actually generates a flag for that, or does it not simply just place a close vote...?
    – Mark Mayo
    Commented Aug 10, 2015 at 13:15
  • @MarkMayo Pretty sure it's a flag, although I don't know who to. I've got a bunch of "opinion" or "broad" flags returned as helpful (travel.stackexchange.com/users/flag-summary/26433 - if you can see it), and I don't have close/open vote privelidges (that only comes at 3000 rep) travel.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions
    – CMaster
    Commented Aug 10, 2015 at 13:24
  • @pnuts "One has one answer, the other six. For me that is pretty much conclusive that 'Ireland' is off topic and 'Mexico' probably not." I don't understand. "Ireland" is the one with six answers, and that proves it's off-topic? Or did you mean to say "on-topic"? But then I'll point out that four of those six answers are by low-reputation users (under 300), who you'd expect to answer any question they knew the answer to, without particularly thinking about whether it's on-topic. Number of answers doesn't say a lot about whether a question is on-topic or not.
    – David Richerby
    Commented Aug 12, 2015 at 8:57

1 Answer 1

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The toddler question is ANCIENT, and its never a good idea to go looking at OLD questions, some of which are open for historical reasons (or closed as well). At the time it was deemed that subjective questions might be allowed if they're really specific . These days the community seems to close most subjective ones. The Texas one, I dont know the area, but I suspect there aren't that many cities that close to the border that match his archeological requirements, so it's also sufficiently narrow. That's my guess though. I don't speak for the community, I haven't answered that one.

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    @pnuts Yes, if you flag a question then the mods can lock it under "historical significance". Text: "This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here"
    – Ankur Banerjee Mod
    Commented Aug 9, 2015 at 22:40
  • @pnuts Nah, there isn't a "lock for historical significance" button in the mod queue, if that's what you're asking. (Like it does for "convert answer to comment" etc.)
    – Ankur Banerjee Mod
    Commented Aug 9, 2015 at 22:53
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    @pnuts A lot of "bad" questions are list questions. We had a long discussion about this in the past on meta.
    – Ankur Banerjee Mod
    Commented Aug 9, 2015 at 23:03

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