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I have a question that has bothered me since my question, "Chronological Order of Star Wars Literature", was closed for being off topic. In the note about why it was closed there is this titbit of information, "Requests for lists of works or recommendations are off-topic as they do not fit our questions and answers format. Feel free to ask about people's favorites in chat." This bothers me because a) I wasn't asking favourites and b) I was asking for reading order which I thought was allowed. I was under this impression and frankly still and because; before I posted and since it was closed I have read the help and the tour pages and saw this the below image (in the Tour).

Tour page with the relevant on topic point highlighted

I am confused by this situation and trying to improve. Even in this question here on Meta, shows that there was a discussion on this but not decisive and furthers my confusion, as I was directed to start a chat --- but currently do not have the reputation to do so.

So my question is this - how can I ask better questions that aren't put on hold for not following the rules, when it appears that I did?

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    You seem to be more asking about this specific question than in general so I've edited your question to reflect that.
    – TheLethalCarrot Mod
    Sep 30, 2019 at 15:21
  • I did a very poor job of trying to ask a generic question - I appreciate your edit.
    – J Crosby
    Sep 30, 2019 at 15:30
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    FWIW 99% of the time if you're questioning the status of a specific question just ask about the specific question rather than the general case. Else the answers are less likely to help you and it only makes the water murkier.
    – TheLethalCarrot Mod
    Sep 30, 2019 at 15:31

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Your question is not off topic per "lists of works or recommendations" and those who voted to close it as such did in error. The post was also unilaterally left open in review (myself being one of the reviewers) as you can see here and was closed outside of review.

That said at the time I was considering voting to close the question as Too Broad as there are way too many books in Star Wars canon than can be reasonably answered in a single answer on SE. However, I erred on the side of caution as I'm not too familiar with Star Wars book canon so it might have been able to have been condensed some.

There's also the potential duplicate situation to address. Whilst you linked this question yourself there is also this one which is a potential duplicate.

So whilst I object to the close reason I don't object to the closure because it is almost certainly Too Broad.

A quick note: it's also worth mentioning that there's potential that not all of the close voters chose that close reason. In a case where multiple close reasons are chosen the system picks the one with the most votes i.e. at least 3. So some of the voters might have chosen a different reason.

How to improve your question?

Personally if I was you at this point I would try and work out what areas of Star Wars literature you are interested in. What's the time period you want to read about? Are you only interested in a few specific events?

From there I would edit my question to ask about the reading/chronological order of the books from that time period or event. Not only would that make the question narrow enough to not be too broad it would also remove the potential duplicate status.

This question is a nice example of this. Focused to a handful of books (4) that are in a "series" and asks for the suggested order of them.

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  • So in short, because SF&F is a largely subjective topic (and SE) narrow down the question, provide examples and work to post as objectively as possible?
    – J Crosby
    Sep 30, 2019 at 15:07
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    @JCrosby To be honest I'm not sure I really understand your comment. My advice for your specific question though is to narrow it down to a more manageable topic because the entire Star Wars book canon is quite a lot.
    – TheLethalCarrot Mod
    Sep 30, 2019 at 15:12

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