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In many discussions when whether or not to close a question comes up on The Bridge, and even here on meta, there is often a vocal group who feels that questions should be closed if they aren't about a problem the user faces.

I believe this mainly draws from this section of the /about.

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However, it remains unclear in the /about whether or not the "actual problem" part means that questions not about actual problems will be closed, or if they're simply more likely to be bad questions that get down-voted (or closed for other reasons). A person could certainly ask questions about problems they don't actually face but which satisfy the "Ask about..." criteria. They could also ask questions about problems they do actually face but which fall in the "Don't ask about..." criteria.

I'm tired of seeing "this isn't an actual problem you face" thing used as an argument for closing a question while the issue remains unclear. So let's clear it up.

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  • So foolishly I didn't look for a dupe until after posting this. Oh well. Luckily, the winning answer is pretty much "Stop being dummies. Use your best judgment" which basically means we can all keep arguing with each other on a daily basis about whether or not something is really a problem someone faces and what exactly that means. Arguing is fun.
    – Sterno
    Jul 12, 2013 at 1:56
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    just because a good Meta question has a highly upvoted, rationale answer doesn't mean folks will stop arguing about it... ever. This is one of the great clauses of the FAQ which allows others to speculate about why you are asking a question and close based on who you are, where you are, or what they think you were thinking. I dislike this clause almost as much as the reasoning of closing a question as "unanswerable" because a user doesn't know the answer.
    – EBongo
    Jul 13, 2013 at 4:27

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