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I was very surprised to see that Meta questions can be closed as 'primarily opinion based'.

IMHO, that doesn't make much sense :-)

Can the close reasons on Meta be different from the ones on Programmers?

What are the chances of this question being closed as 'primarily opinion based'? (There is a precedent)

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    meta.stackexchange.com/a/191774/165773
    – gnat
    Nov 20, 2014 at 15:56
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    @gnat - Thanks, I missed that one.
    – Dan Pichelman
    Nov 20, 2014 at 16:14
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    Dan I think you might also like related recent gem at MSE from Shog: What is a meta for? It drills into more inconsistencies and quirks of meta sites that feel really weird for regular visitors of main sites... questions are not quite questions at meta, answers are not quite answers, opinion based voting being officially legitimate, stuff like that :)
    – gnat
    Nov 21, 2014 at 11:49

2 Answers 2

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The site frowns on "opinion based" questions. It prefers questions that can be answered with "facts, references, or specific expertise."

A question is less likely to be closed on meta than on the main site because there is a large body of "precedent" (across all SE sites), for most questions. But when there isn't, because the question gets into "uncharted territory," it needs to be answered with facts, references or expertise from other sites, or it could get closed.

The term "opinion-based" means "lack of the above."

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I think that matters of opinion are sometimes quite important. Example: I just deleted a question from stackoverflow because it gathered three close votes for being "opinion based." What was it? I asked about the relative merits of teaching JavaFX vs. Java Swing. This is important and I thought the opinion of professionals in the field might be useful.

I asked people to emerge from their technocratic silos and got roundly booed for it. Not so good.

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    The question here deals with that meta sites have a 'primarily opinion' close reason, which seems odd given the nature of what meta is for. The value of opinions on the main site is another question, though I would strongly suggest reading this post and the associated related reading. If you have a question about a specific-question, that is a topic of a different question that you should ask.
    – user40980
    Nov 24, 2014 at 2:47
  • This is not really a "meta" topic.
    – ncmathsadist
    Nov 24, 2014 at 12:53
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    Asking about the topicality of specific questions is indeed a worth asking a different meta question. I should also point out at this point you have two, deleted, down voted questions. Please make sure you take care in asking more questions and making sure they are within the site guidelines. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that you are quite near having the automatic question ban kick in.
    – user40980
    Nov 24, 2014 at 13:31

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