"Advice on what to do" close reason is over-broad

Question

Update: We asked this question almost two years ago, and it took a while for voting to produce a clear winner. We'd like to implement this answer.

As described here, I feel the current wording of one of our close reasons is misleading:

Questions asking for advice on what to do are not practical answerable questions (e.g. "what job should I take?", or "what skills should I learn?"). Questions should get answers explaining why and how to make a decision, not advice on what to do. For more information, click here.

All questions, fundamentally, are asking for "advice on what to do". The trick is in how you refine them. "Here's my tale of woe; help!" doesn't work, and broad "what would you do?" opinion surveys don't work. The key info in this close reason is in the examples -- what job to take, what skills to learn, etc -- rather than in the first phrase that people see.

I just came across a wording we used to use (found in an old, closed question):

Questions seeking advice on what job to take, what skills to learn, etc. are off-topic as the answers are rarely useful to anyone else.

That's much better. Apparently we found it too restrictive and broadened it, but I think we went too far. Can we find something in the middle?

What wording should this close reason have that is sufficiently inclusive but not too broad?

Also, bear in mind that "primarily opinion-based" is baked into SE; that option already exists.

Answer 1

How about:

Questions asking for advice on a specific choice, such as what job to take or what skills to learn, are off-topic as the answers are unlikely to be useful for anyone else, and are often primarily opinion-based. Instead of asking which decision to make, try asking how to make the decision, or more specific details about one element of the decision.

Keeping a little bit of the breadth I think is helpful, as otherwise people will think it only applies to the listed points (yes, 'etc.' is there, but giving some clarification on what 'etc.' means is useful).

I also think that the 'rarely useful to anyone else' is less important than the 'opinion based' side: we answer all sorts of questions that wouldn't necessarily be very useful for other people on StackExchange sites, but in these cases it's really that there is not a good answer possible: it comes down to opinion and preference.

---

Moderator note: At this writing this answer is +30/-1, so we're going with it. I did some minor wordsmithing to prioritize "too subjective" over "not useful to others" and to make room for a meta link. Here's the final version:

Questions asking for advice on a specific career choice, such as what job to take or what skills to learn, are difficult to answer objectively and are rarely useful for anyone else. Instead of asking which decision to make, try asking how to make the decision, or more specific details about one element of the decision. (More information)

Further Update: This close reason has been modified again:

Questions asking for advice on a specific choice, such as what job to take or what skills to learn, are difficult to answer objectively and are rarely useful for anyone else. Instead of asking which decision to make, try asking how to make the decision, or more specific details about one element of the decision.

More Information

Answer 2

My proposal:

It is not practical for us to answer a question that depends so heavily on your own abilities, preferences or circumstances. Instead, consider asking a factual question that will help you make your own choices, and that can be answered without detailed knowledge of your personal situation.

Rationale:

A good close reason focusses on why the question is unsuitable for this site, and suggests an alternative (where one exists). If it focusses on the wrong thing, it can be both too restrictive and too broad.

Putting topics or forms of words in the close reason (as opposed to the comments or guidance page where they can be contextualised) risks misleading close-voters (into closing things they shouldn't, and possibly ignoring other questions which have the same problem but don't fit the mould) and question authors (it doesn't help them fix the question or ask better questions in the future), unless those topics/phrases are outright prohibited on their own account (e.g. belongs on another SE site, we are not lawyers, etc.).

It's possible to have good questions which - implicitly or explicitly - ask what to do, what skills to learn, what job to take, but which are sufficiently focussed and convey enough information that the question answerable and the answer is applicable to others.

The real problem questions are generally asking for personalised career advice, which results in some combination of:

• asking the OP loads of detailed questions about what they actually want (which of these incentives is more important to you?)
• finding out what the OP's tolerance of a range of different risks is (how happy are you trading away all job security?), which may depend on the financial position of the OP (household savings, etc.)
• assessing the OP's abilities (which skill are you better at, and by how much?)
• determining if certain factors exist which the OP has ommitted (is your company currently short-staffed or looking to reduce its headcount?)

For every Question proper, we end up firing two or three questions back (or writing flowchart answers in which we try to give all possible answers and the circumstances in which they're appropriate).

Quite often the OP doesn't rightly know themselves, and even if we give them a satisfactory answer, we only get it 'right' for that one person's situation.

A good-fit question will elicit answers which are useful to someone else, which means someone else needs to read the question and be able to confidently say either "I am in the same boat" - or not.

Answer 3

My proposal:

Questions seeking advice on what job to take, what skills to learn, etc. are off-topic as the answers are rarely useful to anyone else. Instead of asking what decision to make, try asking how to make a decision. For more information click here.

The "here" link would point to something very similar to the current one, maybe even an edit to that. The reasoning is the same; it's just the presentation that I think is a problem. That post should probably also link to this help.

Answer 4

I Suggest:

Questions asking for advice on what decision(s) to make, are not practical answerable questions (e.g. "what job should I take?", or "what skills should I learn?"). Questions should get answers explaining why and how to make a decision, not advice on what decisions to make or course to take. For more information click here.

Answer 5

How about this:

Questions asking for advice specific to one's own career path ("what job should I take?", "what skills should I learn?", etc.) are off-topic as it can be difficult to give objective advice to such questions and the answers are rarely applicable to a broader audience.

This can also be phrased like:

Questions asking for advice relating to career path decisions (...) ...

---

There may be questions not falling under "career path decisions" (currently) commonly closed using this reason, but these can either:

• Just be closed as opinion-based instead.
• Be edited to be on topic.

The reason I think career path decisions should be singled out here is because they are fundamentally outside of the scope of this site (right?) - it's often impossible for such questions to be edited to be on topic by the author or anyone else, even if one can come up with some more objective version of the question.

The rest are just opinion-based and trying to have this close reason cover all of those when we already have a reason for that just seems counter-productive.