Overly broad game recs are being reopened and left open

Question

I’ve noticed a pattern in game-recommendation questions recently:

1. Someone posts an incredibly broad game recommendation question.
2. It gets swiftly closed as too broad
3. The asker protests and adds a little bit of information, narrowing it down to be slightly less incredibly broad than before. Sometimes they just protest. It’s still incredibly broad. Comments stating why it should be closed in the first place still apply.
4. It gets reopened and left open.
5. Answers might even remark on how broad it is.

Here’s some recent examples of when that’s occurred:

• What is a good, free, Space-faring RPG?
• Looking for a WWII RPG that requires no adaptation/conversion
• Short One-Session Adventures for AD&D 1e?

In the first two, an answerer even rightly points out that there are countless matches and the question is still overly broad (not to point a finger at that answerer). In the third, there are comments about it being too broad which probably still apply.

Aren’t we being too soft on these questions? Shouldn’t they remain closed until they refine their criteria sufficiently, not until they simply refine their criteria at all?

I’ll leave this here for some prior discussion too: What's so problematic about a recommendation question having potentially hundreds of answers, anyway?

Answer 1

This is a good point. The other mods and I tend to exercise our closes and reopens "once only", so once we've closed a question, if the community reopens, we just grouse and move on, mainly because we get sick of people screaming about what fascists we are. I tend to then contribute an answer that follows our "challenge the frame of the question" site guidelines by giving an answer but then telling them their criteria suck (as I did on two of the questions you linked). You are correct in that none of those have really been corrected enough to reopen, and should all be reclosed. Everyone go vote!