Would like to know why my flag was rejected on "Curious where a young student should put money"

Question

A contradiction has occured on this question:

Where should a young student put their money?

I left a comment:

Unfortunately there's no right answer to this. You could invest in nearly anything. It all depends on what you enjoy, what your goals are, what type of risk you're willing to take and all sorts of other things. I'd also tell you to not ask for such generalized advice from essentially anonymous people on the internet (myself included). Set some goals, figure out a path you want to take, then come back to ask questions about that path. – Ender Jun 18 at 2:06

That comment received 6 upvotes. Along with that comment, I voted to close (flagged to close since I don't have the rep to vote yet) as too broad / primarily opinion based and that was declined.

Could anyone explain why? I see on this exchange a bit more leeway is given then on other exchanges, but this particular question seems incredibly broad even for here.

Answer 1

While I didn't decline it (so I don't know exactly what the thought process was) I am going to assume it is as you suggest; we have more leniency towards opinions here out of necessity.

tl;dr

So, yes, the question is opinion based. But there are some formulaic opinions that are accepted as best practices that could be applied as answers.

But why?

You can also look through a lot of questions about "how do I save money" or "what should I do with my leftover budget" or "where to start investing" and see that this community does have a somewhat standard response.

Your comment was technically correct, but it amounted to "depends" and some advice to "ask a more specific question". What you might have missed is that for some of our community, knowing how to ask such a specific question is itself the problem that needs to be answered. For money.se, it is important to see the not the question as they wrote it, but what they probably meant. That is presumptuous to a degree, but if people knew what they meant on the more basic questions they could go somewhere else and find the answer. Our community has a several year history of welcoming basic understanding questions as well as the hardcore semi-pro day traders.

I liked the direction and tone of the two answers I see right now: they could be expanded a touch, but they are good. Both of the answers on the question prompted our poster to think deeper (and hopefully ask follow up questions) about setting goals and how one might achieve them. When I answer questions, I lay out a road map that works for beginners because, they have to start somewhere. Ideally, our community will be welcoming, new users will stay around and progress far past the 101 type questions. But we need to allow the 101's and help them on their way.

Answer 2

@Ender - Welcome to Money.SE. As one of the mods, I prefer to err on the side of caution. A question that, as written, may at first blush appear off-topic might just need a bit of editing. The OP was a new member, and it's far more welcoming to first offer a bit of time before closing. In this case, there was only one close vote (I'll respect your flag as the equivalent to a vote) which implied that the others either didn't feel as strongly, or were reading the question differently.

The question itself might have been edited for clarification or we may have found it to be too similar to an existing question. What's really unfortunate is the OP didn't return at all. I hope you do, both to ask, and perhaps answer a few .