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I would like to travel to (the smallest) island where there are squirrels

It states

Please edit the question to limit it to a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer. Avoid asking multiple distinct questions at once. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question.

I added the smallest island requirement to this question so it wouldn't be put on hold because there must be a small island possible with squirrels. Now it's on hold again.

Why is it on hold it seems like its very possible to find the correct answer for it?

How would it be possible to edit this question to make it not on hold?

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    "How would it be possible to edit this question to make it not on hold?" Since the question has gone through multiple iterations already and the answers are written for different versions of it, are you sure it's a good idea to get that status lifted? Do you feel your question is currently insufficiently answered?
    – Mast
    Jan 20, 2019 at 18:49

4 Answers 4

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It is at once both far too specific to be of use to others, and too broad. The number of people in the world who want to travel and see squirrels specifically is, I would suggest, far smaller than the number who want to see penguins or elephants or moose. The number, out of that small group, who for some reason insist that the squirrels be on a small island must not be much more than one.

Yet it is a broad question: hundreds, even thousands of islands meet this criteria. Europe and North America are full of islands. There's an area near me called "The 30,000 Islands" and it by no means contains the majority of North American islands. What's more, some very small islands might not have any squirrels on them, but might be near a mainland or other island that does, and then you could see the squirrel. Heck, I could throw a rock a few feet into the lake and balance on it with one foot and see a squirrel. Is that rock now the correct answer to the question? Of course not. In fact, there is no correct answer to the question, or there are thousands, which is the same thing.

How can you improve the question? Ask for something bigger or smaller than your actual desire. Two examples:

  • how can I predict my chances of seeing particular wildlife on a given trip? You can use your squirrel-viewing needs as an example, and list a handful of towns or parks or other places-smaller-than-a-country you are thinking of visiting. Good answers here will lead you not just to resources like websites or guidebooks, but teach you how to use those to find out what you want. You may also get some outside-the-box answers like searching on Instagram for pictures of the wildlife and then looking at the geotags. This is a bigger question than you asked, but it's useful to more people, so might stay open.
  • is it possible to reach the islands in [specific lake or park] [by bridge, in rented canoes, whatever]? This wouldn't mention squirrels but would focus on the mechanics of your journey. The information would be useful to people who wanted to reach those islands for other reasons, such as a picnic. By making the question smaller, you make it useful to more people.

I can't guarantee either approach will produce a question that will stay open. And you simply must reduce your scope from the entire planet. I think Europe and North America are actually out of scope for you given your location. This should be clear in the question if you intend to still ask "where can I see" type questions. But it would be better to choose the city/region first and then ask questions about that region. You may end up deciding not to visit that region if it's not squirrel-dense enough for you, but the question and answers can still be useful to others.

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Stack Exchange sites do not want long list answers with very many options, they want answers where one fairly short list, or even better some text without a list, gives a good answer and only one good answer covers all options.

There are way too many small islands with squirrels, all over the world.
If you had restricted your question from the start to one sub species of squirrels, you might have been able to define the search area to something small enough to fit this site. But once there were several answers mentioning several different subspecies, narrowing down to one would not work anymore. (As it would invalidate the already given answers.)

I think you should give up on this question and in new questions think about how many options for good answers exist. Too many, sorry but alas, not a good question for the site.

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Your question was initially closed for being too broad: you wanted to see squirrels on any island, anywhere in the world, and there are tens or hundreds of thousands of those.

To get around this, you changed the question to specify the smallest island. To be sure, that does mean there's now only one correct answer. However, it feels very much that you changed the question not because you genuinely want to know the answer to that question but, instead, because you wanted to change the question in a way that would defeat the reason it was closed. The island being the smallest only became important to you when we said we wouldn't answer a question about what islands of any size have squirrels on them.

The question in its current form feels like a geography challenge, rather than a question about travelling. We're not a geography challenge site. Indeed, it was never clear in the original question why the squirrels had to be on an island. Again, it feels like an arbitrary challenge rather than a genuine request for help.

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"Squirrels" are incredible broad. To quote Wikipedia:

The squirrel family includes tree squirrels, ground squirrels, chipmunks, marmots (including woodchucks), flying squirrels, and prairie dogs amongst other rodents.

Also

Squirrels live in almost every habitat, from tropical rainforest to semiarid desert, avoiding only the high polar regions and the driest of deserts.

"Islands" are incredibly broad. Sweden counts over 200 000 islands within its borders, Finland over 300 000. And since squirrels are everywhere...

Also, your question can't be answered because even if someone, say, had an incredibly detailed satellite photo set of the globe with astounding amount of computing power at hand and found the smallest island with some sort of squirrel on it there's no guarantee that'll be the answer in the future, and I am not talking geological time frames just a few hours -- flooding or drying might create a new island or attach it to a larger landmass and then you need to restart.

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