Recently I've found myself looking at questions that have a few close votes for "off-topic: advice on what to do", and I find myself wondering if that close reason is really helping. The text is:
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.
Isn't that pretty much what "primarily opinion-based" means? Tonight I was ready to close a question as POB, but the three close-voters who'd already weighed in voted for this off-topic reason and I found myself reluctant to overrule them. (So I set it aside to see what the community does on its own.) This is not the first time this has happened.
Questions that are primarily opinion-based aren't inherently off-topic; they're just bad fits for SE. The message we should be sending with those is that the topic is ok while the specific question isn't; off-topic questions, on the other hand, are, well, off-topic, and that's harder to fix.
What is the difference in intent between this custom close reason and POB? If we can't describe it, maybe we should stop using this reason in favor of the built-in POB.