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In this question, there is some editing to "fix" the question. However, there is no explanation of what is wrong with the original question. It sort of looks like there was a comment that has since been deleted or a chat discussion that was never linked.

The original question had a single answer: farm the six uber bosses to get a Hellfire ring. That is pretty much the equivalent of the first example given in the question (the Pandemonium Event). That seems like a good use of the expertise of the site. People who know both Diablo 3 and Diablo 2 should be able to answer that question. Not everyone played both games and not everyone who plays Diablo 3 knows about all the potential end game activities (as evidenced by the question being asked in the first place, not to mention fbueckert's response).

The two edits of the original question have essentially butchered it. It's an entirely different question now. It's not even a consistent question, as twice it indicates that the poster is looking for things to do after beating Inferno and the final question asks for things to do besides beating Inferno. The original question is sort of included in the new question, but list questions produce much more shallow answers.

We still don't have the actual answer to the original question. What is a Hellfire ring? How do you farm a Hellfire ring? What are the steps? Is it difficult? Those are questions that were implicitly included in the original question and should have been answered. As such, the original question was a duplicate of How can I craft The Hellfire Ring? (which bizarrely was closed as a duplicate of Where are the key wardens and where are my keys? which only answers part of the question).

The new question is also interesting, although the only answer is rather shallow. Where can I see alternative builds to try? How can I get missing achievements? How do I farm Hellfire rings?

My main point is that it is frustrating to come to a question like that and only read half the discussion. How to engage in a discussion that you can only half read? Apparently fbueckert had concerns about the original question. What were they? Could they have been addressed by a much smaller edit that preserved more of the original question?

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  • The original question was problematic, at best, due to the way it was asking for more information. The asker was well aware of what activities were available, but had decided that pursuing those goals was not worth it to him. He essentially wanted Arqade to give him more goals to work towards, and that's not really a good fit here. Objectivity is key, and hard to be objective when asking for alternate goals, which are incredibly subjective.
    – Frank
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 14:04
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    @fbueckert How do you know that he knew about the Infernal Machines Event? The only Diablo 3 goals he mentioned were leveling to paragon 100 and beating the game on Inferno. He gave a concrete example of what he wanted: the Pandemonium Event from Diablo 2. There is an answer to that: the Infernal Machines Event. The revised question is answered by a subjective list of activities that people may find worthwhile. So we moved from a question with a single objective answer to one with a list of subjective answers. How is that an improvement?
    – Brythan
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 14:31
  • In its current form it's still basically a recommendation question, and unbounded lists are not accepted on SE. He should figure out himself whether he wants to play, that's not good Q&A.
    – Matthew Read
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 15:06
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    @Matthew leaving aside whether its a reccomendaton, as well as whether that's inherently a bad thing - it is not an unbound list. The list of endgame content in Diablo 3 is in fact quite tightly bound and relatively short.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 15:59
  • @LessPop_MoreFizz "What is there to do" doesn't come across as asking for a list of endgame content to me. Regardless, that version of the question doesn't strike me as much better, I thought we were generally opposed to list-of-arbitrary-things whether it's content or weapons or mechanics, etc.
    – Matthew Read
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 20:08
  • I can't find much recent discussion on that latter point, maybe I am missing something.
    – Matthew Read
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 20:14
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    @MatthewRead Hello. I'm the person who asked the question. I wasn't asking for a list of things. I was asking if a similar end-game goal existed in Diablo 3 to the examples I gave from Diablo 2. This was answered by talking about the existence of the Hellfire Ring, which I was unaware of.
    – asteri
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 23:20

3 Answers 3

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I was the person who made the original edit to the question. I did this in response to concerns raised in a comment by @fbueckert, but his comment has since been deleted. I'm not sure why, but it's possible @fbueckert felt his comment was no longer relevant deleted it to clean up the comments section.

For starters, you're misunderstanding the original question. The user wasn't asking for suggestions of things similiar to Uber-Diabo from Diablo 2, he was looking for suggestions on things people thought he would find fun. The Uber-Diablo event was just an example of something he found fun. The problem with this is that it's primarily opinion based, which is one of our close reasons. This is because "fun" is highly subjective, and the answers won't be of any user to anyone but the asker. What one person finds fun another finds boring, and even listing some things you like doesn't help much.

One of the problems with these questions that voting on the answers doesn't really make sense. If the answer isn't something the asker finds fun, should we downvote the question? If someone else finds a suggested activity boring, should they downvote it? Both of those seem wrong, and the problem and confusion arises from the fact that fun is just a matter of opinion.

Additionally, if someone else comes along looking for things to do post-inferno for Diablo should they ask their own question detailing what they find fun? That would be their only option, because if they don't share the interests of anyone who has asked the question before they would need to ask their own question. This would result in a whole bunch of questions with users detailing their specific interests. All this achieves is that it scatters all the useful information of exactly what there is to do in Diablo 3 post-Inferno. Any user trying to find the answer themselves will need to dig through multiple questions all asking the same thing until they stumble across one that suggested something they like. Either that or the give up and ask their own question, which of course we'd need to keep opinion since they have opinions which differs from others just making the problem worse for future visitors to the site.

The edits were made in an attempt to solve these problems, by switching it from "Suggest some things that would be fun for me" to "What can you do after Inferno so I can decide myself". Where as the original question was highly opinion based, the edited question is purely objective, and solves the above problems. Fun no longer enters into the equation because it's just asking for a list of end-game content for Diablo 3. The voting confusion ceases to be a problem since "what is fun" was what caused the confusion in the first place. Finally, and most importantly, we no longer have the issue where users will need to ask their own question detailing what they find fun and thus scattering the information. Instead they can just look at the answers to this question, and decide for themselves which of these things they want to do. They won't need to dig through a bunch of different questions all asking the same question, but with a different definition of fun in each. I'm sure you can agree this makes things a lot easier for users having the same post-game Diablo 3 problems that Jeff Gohlke was having.

As for your final concern, the reason I took out the paragraph where the asker says he really enjoyed Uber-Diablo event in Diablo 2 was because that was no longer relevant in the revised question. The Uber-Diablo example was just there to provide an example of what the asker found to be fun. Since the revised question is no longer concerned with that the asker finds fun it's no longer relevant. It's just fluff, so I took it out to the make question more concise.

I hope this addresses your concerns with the question being changed.

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    You can still read the original question. The author never mentioned the word fun. The author mentioned achieving the goal of beating the game on Inferno and asked for new goals like the Pandemonium Event from Diablo 2. Admittedly, the author did identify the goal of leveling a character up to Paragon 100 as "not enough". It's perhaps reasonable to guess that the author found that goal not fun, although that was never said.
    – Brythan
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 13:56
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    This reasoning is exactly why I originally voted to close it. Since the question no longer requires an opinion-based answer, I withdrew my objection. Sadly, since I can't remove my close vote, that'll just have to decay over time.
    – Frank
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 13:58
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    @fbueckert It never did require an opinion based answer. The original question asked for goals similar to the Pandemonium Event or Uber Diablo. That's not a matter of opinion -- there's a simple factual answer: the Infernal Machines Event. The Infernal Machines Event is almost exactly what the Pandemonium Event was. The Pandemonium Event had three keys, three portals, and three bosses. The Infernal Machines Event has six bosses (in three pairs). The new question is more opinion-based than the old question, not less.
    – Brythan
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 14:20
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    @Brythan: He never used the word fun but that's what he was looking for. You're still misunderstanding the question. His Diablo 2 example was just that, an example of something he found fun. He wanted people to suggest things he could do based on that.
    – Wipqozn Mod
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 14:26
  • Look at the question again. What he wanted wasn't fun -- it was purpose. He wanted a goal. He gave an example of a goal in Diablo 2. He asked for an equivalent goal in Diablo 3. That equivalent goal exists. The question was objectively answerable.
    – Brythan
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 14:42
  • It may be that he finds playing towards goals fun, but he never asked for fun in an open ended way. He only asked for a goal like beating the game on Inferno mode or the Pandemonium event. The nature of these are that they are completable. You feel like you have accomplished something when they are finished. You may finish them at a low paragon level or at a high paragon level. Skill matters. Those are objective criteria and generally applicable. Fun was fbueckert's misinterpretation of the original question.
    – Brythan
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 14:48
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    @wipqozn while I agree with the main thrust of your argument, I think the edit was a pretty bad case of assuming negative intent and engaging in some of the same magic words fallacy that I've been railing about for a while now...
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 16:01
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    @LessPop_MoreFizz I disagree. To me his intention and what he was asking is quite clear: I'm bored, give me some suggestions on what to do based on these other things I like (i.e uber diablo). Also, although it's entirely possible this was a case of misunderstood intent, it was not a case of magic word fallacy. Neither I nor fbeuckart really took issue with any specific thing he said, but that his question appears to us to be asking "Give me some fun things to do since I'm bored." We came to this conclusion by judging the question as a whole, and not by narrowing in on any one part of it.
    – Wipqozn Mod
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 16:16
  • Hello. I'm the person who asked the question. Yes, I was of the opinion that the question was objectively answerable -- looking for something similar to the events I mentioned that existed in Diablo 2. I was asking about what existed (if anything), and existence is objective. If I had known about everything that existed in the game and asked "what can I do that's fun?" that would be subjective, and hence not a question I would ask. Perhaps I could've phrased my question better, but it's difficult to ask about something that you don't even know if it exists, except by giving examples.
    – asteri
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 23:16
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I disagree with the closing of the question. It came off as ranty, but was asking for a objective answer of things to do. The user may have taken the objective answer and decided that none of the activities were worth his time, but that's okay. He never actually asked the answerers to decided for him what kind of activities he'd like. His complaints about the activities he already knew about read to me as just some context for why he was looking for other options... the current ones he was aware of did not interest him. A question should probably not be closed simply because context was provided about why the person was asking. That said, such context is not really necessary.

I also disagree with the argument that the author was already aware of all the possibilities... just because he knew some doesn't mean he knew all. And even if he knew all, it doesn't mean he knew that he knew everything. We shouldn't be closing a question based on what we think the author knows. In fact, who the author is, what they know, and what they believe should have absolutely no bearing on whether or not the question is suitable for the site. This is why it can often be better to leave out some of the personal context about why you're asking.

That said, your meta seems to really be about the editing of the question. Regardless of the reason for it, I feel Wipqozn's edit improved the question by removing the unnecessary clutter of the author's opinion about the activities he was already aware of. But even ignoring the question of whether or not it should have been edited, I don't see how it fundamentally changed the question in the manner you describe. I don't even see the "Hellfire Ring" mentioned in the original question, so I'm especially confused by your assertion that it's original form was a duplicate of the question about crafting the Hellfire Ring.

You seem to be saying:

  1. His question mentions, as an example of end game goals, Uber-Diablo in Diablo 2.
  2. Crafting the Hellfire Ring is a similar goal in Diablo 3.
  3. A question exists for "How do I craft the Hellfire Ring?".
  4. Therefore, this question is an exact dupe.

So even if we make the leap that the Hellfire Ring was the only thing he was interested in, which I don't think is the case, that's not how exact duplicates work. Exact duplicates don't work by presuming knowledge of the answer... they need to actually be the same question. You can't turn a question of "What is there to do?" into a question of "How do I do it?" because What and How are two different questions with two different answers. This is important because you can't guarantee that there is or always will be a single answer to the "What?" part of the question. Maybe two patches from now there will be a PantsOnFire Ring to craft or something.

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  • I would've happily removed my close vote after the edit, but unfortunately, that's not something we can do.
    – Frank
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 17:19
  • That would be an excellent feature.
    – Sterno
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 18:41
  • I do not claim that the question is an exact dupe -- only that it is as much of a dupe as other questions closed as duplicates. In fact, more than some. Note that "How can I craft a Hellfire Ring?" was closed as a dupe of "Where are the key wardens and where are my keys?" If the question is to be closed, then it would be far better to close it with the original text as a dupe of the Hellfire Ring question. That at least would answer the question for the current asker and future people who may be wondering the same thing.
    – Brythan
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 23:48
  • The critical problem that I had with the edit was that it removed the key portion of his question: What events in Diablo 3 are similar to the Pandemonium Event and Uber Diablo from Diablo 2? That's an entirely objective question with a single answer: the Infernal Machines Event and no equivalent to Uber Diablo as yet. The edit is an entirely new question with no reference to the Pandemonium Event. They kept the most objectionable part of the original question: should he stop playing the game rather than pursuing his end game options and made it open ended.
    – Brythan
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 23:59
  • If other things were incorrectly closed as dupes, that does not mean we should close yet more questions incorrect as dupes.
    – Sterno
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 0:46
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There seems to be some confusion about what I'm suggesting in regards to how the question should have been edited. I think that the original question should have been cleaned up to something like

What goal-based events exist in the Diablo 3 endgame?

After beating the game on Inferno, what's the next goal in playing Diablo 3? In Diablo 2, there were Uber Tristram and Uber Diablo. Are there any similar goal-based events in Diablo 3?

That would lead to an answer talking about the Infernal Machines event. Since there's already quite a bit of discussion of that event, the answer should mostly consist of links to relevant questions.

In addition, Wipqozn could have posted a new question:

What is there to do after beating Inferno mode?

After beating Inferno mode on Diablo 3, what is there to do next? There are a couple things I know about, like grinding up your Paragon level and beating higher Monster Powers, but I'm looking for others. I'm hoping someone can list the activities you can do after Inferno mode.

What is there to do after beating Inferno mode?

That question is squishier, but it's still better than the current version of the question, which has questionable things like "but that doesn't really appeal to me" and "so I can decide whether to keep playing or move onto something else":

I beat Inferno mode on Diablo 3 so I'm trying to figure out what to do next. There are a couple things I know about, like grinding up your paragon level, but that doesn't really appeal to me. I'm hoping someone can list the activities you can do after Inferno mode so I can decide whether to keep playing or move onto something else.

What is there to do besides beating Inferno mode?

The current version of the question implicitly asks for a list of activities that are more fun than grinding up paragon levels, supposedly the problem that the edit was fixing.

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  • My main disagreement with what you're saying here, and indeed with people who voted to close for a similar reason, is that the question is not asking for activities "more fun than grinding". It is not asking the answerer to make that subjective call. He's just asking for activities, and happened to mention he doesn't like grinding. If all of the remaining activities involve grinding, he may stop playing the game, but that doesn't mean the answer shouldn't include them, and he's not asking them to be excluded. Why should we assume otherwise?
    – Sterno
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 0:50
  • As for the rest, I think we could probably argue all day about what "main goals" could mean. You may be right that your edit comes closer to his intent. But then again, maybe not. Luckily, he's can edit his own post and fix things if desired!
    – Sterno
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 0:52
  • Our objective is not to judge what he can do, and suggest a possiblity, but just provide the information so that he can decide himself. Even what you suggest, the Hellfire Ring as similiar to Uber Diablo/Tristram, is subjective. You feel it's similiar due to there being three items you have to gather. I say it's not because you don't actually do anything with those items, except keep them in your inventory. I disagree that the current question asks for more fun things to do.
    – Frank
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 3:55
  • @fbueckert What items do you only keep in inventory? In the Pandemonium Event, the goal is to build a Hellfire Torch. In the Infernal Machines event, the goal is to build a Hellfire Ring. Both of those are usable items. You get benefits from equipping them. All the intermediate objects (the Keys and the Infernal Machines) are consumed along the quests. Both are end game quests. Both involve fighting Uber bosses and special mini-bosses who drop keys.
    – Brythan
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 8:16
  • See Deconstructing the Infernal Machine for more discussion on both the Pandemonium Event and the Infernal Machines event.
    – Brythan
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 8:17

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