In Shopping in Los Angeles , a diamond mod closed the question, saying "Please feel free to ask other questions about Los Angeles, cruises, or Hawaii, but just not shopping - sorry!"
As I understand it, the ban on shopping questions is more or less a ban on "What's the best X?" style questions. I thought it wasn't meant to be a a ban on questions about shopping. Are all questions about shopping forbidden?
Jeff's post is completely irrelevant. Just because the word "shopping" is in it doesn't make it a shopping-recommendation question. It's the same as any other question asking about where someone can participate in a particular activity. If questions about where to travel to see gorillas, to go white water rafting, to eat kangaroo, and so on, are not off-topic, then asking questions about where to go shopping are not off topic either.
It has nothing at all to do with "shopping" questions which are off-topic, which actually refers to questions that ask for recommendations on the best thing to buy etc.
Frankly I'm a bit surprised that people are making that kind of connection.
I'll put my hand up and admit I skimread and answered with a reason a bit too hastily, however the question as it stands is still too vague - asking where to go shopping in Los Angeles is a massively broad question. If it can be rephrased to indicate what they're after - sports gear, souvenirs, Hollywood gear etc, and some more details about perhaps where they're staying, to narrow it down a little from the 500 square miles that is Los Angeles, then we could see it being reopened.
The canonical resource on this topic is Jeff Atwood's blog post:
