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This question is currently closed as opinion based: Better indentation and navigation in assembly source code

But according to this meta post, package recommendations seem to be fine: Are questions about package recommendations on topic?

Also, to counter the five close votes, there are nine upvotes, and two favorite marks, which would indicate that the community does find the question useful.

In general, I think there's an exaggerated fear of "opinion based" questions in the SE network. People also like to close questions, for some reason. I haven't seen any disruptive amount of low quality posts at this SE. Especially in Beta, I think we should try to be welcoming.

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The problem with that question is not that it asks for package recomendation, but that it's vague within that request.

For instance, it's OK to ask:

I don't like the provided assembly-mode for reasons A and B. What's a good major-mode for the assembly language?

That's a well specified question.

The question you linked is not asking for a major-mode, and it's not aiming at a specific objective. It goes more along the lines of:

asm-mode is a mess, what packages can fix that?

It's not clear what the author didn't like about it, or what they're trying to fix. It mentions autocomplete and yasnippet, but it's not clear what they have to do with anything.

The question needs clarification.

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    Shouldn't the close reason be "Unclear what you're asking", instead of "opinion based", then? Unclear can be made more clear, if it's opinion based it's not much to do...
    – Meaningful Username
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 14:18
  • And, for what it's worth, the answer that the OP accepted suggests that she was mostly concerned about indentation issues. If the question were clarified to make the indentation issue explicit, it would help a lot.
    – Dan Mod
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 14:18
  • @MeaningfulUsername: people may have wanted to close it for multiple reasons. The way it's phrased makes it sound like it's asking for opinion-based answers. It looks like we're implicitly adopting a relaxed norm to this kind of issue on Emacs.SE, but people may still find specific questions to be too opinion-based even for a relaxed norm.
    – Dan Mod
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 14:20
  • @Dan: And I think this mindset is detrimental to a growing community. Five people who wanted to close outweighs nine that thought it was useful. To me, this question generated knowledge that can be useful for other participants on the SE, and that is good enough.
    – Meaningful Username
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 14:22
  • @MeaningfulUsername: as I said, we seem to be adopting an implicit norm about interpreting "opinion-based" questions generously on Emacs.SE -- not to my specific tastes, but I can roll with it. However, a generous norm does not make it an absolute, which is why I suggested some users (a number of whom are pretty high-rep) found it too opinion-based even given the norm. The specific question is currently unclear, potentially too opinion-based, and could have too many answers. Note, though, that it's only on hold -- it could be edited to make it better, and then we could reopen it.
    – Dan Mod
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 14:35
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    @MeaningfulUsername Upvotes don't necessarily mean "I think this will be useful". A lot of time it just means "Oh, this title sounds interesting". Don't read too much into it. People can also vote to reopen questions, that's how you say "I think this would have been useful".
    – Malabarba Mod
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 16:19
  • "Assembly programming is a mess", what packages can fix that? what is that I never said this or something like this ? omg
    – Vivian Maya
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 19:48
  • @VivianMaya Sorry, you're right. I meant to say asm-mode not Assembly programming.
    – Malabarba Mod
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 19:50
  • @VivianMaya Just to clarify: I didn't close your question, and I think it can be improved. I'm just clarifying the reason it was put on hold, so that it can be edited and improved.
    – Malabarba Mod
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 19:53
  • @Malabarba It is ok if it needs to be.
    – Vivian Maya
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 19:55
  • @Malabarba: Then it seems the voting system is not what I thought it was. I don't have enough rep to vote for re-opening here, but I've seen the effect of people being eager to close on Music.SE, so I thought it was worth some discussion. I see some of the points brought up here, but at the same time I still feel the question could have been left open, with some comments indicating improvement areas.
    – Meaningful Username
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 20:22
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    @MeaningfulUsername: the question has, in fact, been reopened. However, a couple of comments made early on explicitly requested that the question be clarified, and it was closed much later (by different users) after no changes were made to the question. Please feel free to edit the question to make it clearer and more discrete -- doing so will help prevent it from getting closed again.
    – Dan Mod
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 20:44

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