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I posted a question which was flagged as off topic and then closed.

Questions seeking product, service, or learning material recommendations are off-topic because they become outdated quickly and attract opinion-based answers.

The question was essentially how do I archive emails in a format that is likely to be easily accessible in the future... I'm led to believe that this was flagged because the moderator thought that I was asking for a specific product or service recommendation, but I was not. I was asking for an archive format recommendation and I gave specific details about my needs.

My issue is not that the question was closed... but I flagged it twice asking it to be reopened and these flags were rejected without any feedback.

I have three questions from this incident:

  • What was wrong with my question? I'm led to believe the question was closed because file formats are considered a product or service, which feels very wrong to me.
  • For those of us who have an issue (or a misunderstanding of what warrants a particular flag), how are we supposed to get feedback from our closed questions?
  • If this question is indeed off topic on superuser... what would be the appropriate site to ask it on?
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What was wrong with my question? I'm led to believe the question was closed because file formats are considered a product or service, which feels very wrong to me.

There are two major issues with your question. The first, you are asking us to predict what file formats will exist in the future, we cannot predict the future. Since we don't know what file formats will still exists it is difficult to recommend them. There was a comment that indicated their concern the question would attract opinions, on what file formats you should use, rather then actual answers based on facts.

The second issue, is you were indeed asking us to recommend which file format you should use, the correct close reason was selected for this reason in my opinion.

For those of us who have an issue (or a misunderstanding of what warrants a particular flag), how are we supposed to get feedback from our closed questions?

You can either ask a question on Meta Super User or asked for an explanation within Ask a Super User Moderator

If this question is indeed off topic on superuser... what would be the appropriate site to ask it on?

I don't believe that community currently exists as it is currently written.

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  • 1
    Thanks for the explanation. I'm admittedly still feeling a bit strange, as many answers I see on SU which do not explicitly ask for software recommendations, can only be effectively answered by providing them (All answers to this popular question have software recommendations). I was under the impression that this was a grey line on SU and exceptions could be made for legitimate power user questions, such as suitable file formats for specific use cases. – RTbecard Jan 11 '20 at 14:25
  • @RTbecard - There is a big difference between a question that can be answered, and a question, asking us to predict what file systems will be around. Nearly every answer to that question was much more then a software recommendation, it indicated, exactly what to do if you were to use it. – Ramhound Jan 11 '20 at 20:17

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