A lot of people come here asking questions in good faith in the understanding that GIS Stack Exchange exists primarily to help those who come to the table with GIS questions. Unfortunately, a lot of very good questions get closed or put on hold before they are even given a chance to be answered. The process for putting these questions into such a status has evolved into a high level of subjectivity that does a lot of damage to the GIS S.E. and serves to only turn people away when they see people jumping quickly to be the first to be the least helpful.
A lot of these instances occur because of misunderstanding as to what is off-topic in GIS S.E., misapplication of tour suggestions to ask a single question as if they are strict rules (even in cases where a second question is posed in the post so as to clarify the first question), and misinterpretation of something as too-broad which is not.
Sometimes, important, but opinionated, questions are posed asking for suggestions on the best way to do something, options for ways to solve something, or ways to improve a process. As professionals in the GIS industry, these are things we do daily. There is often more than one way to do something.
It seems a significant amount of value is lost on GIS Stack Exchange when these questions are just thrown in the trash bin and those asking these questions are told their contributions are not valued.
Is it time for a parallel ("fourth") site/sub-site for open-ended questions like these?
Examples:
- Here's one with regards to Supervised Neural Networks for site selection in GIS. Machine learning in GIS will be a hot topic in the coming years.
- Here's one listed as off-topic that should not have been. Using population data as Z-axis to make a 3D map in Python. It's clear the author is asking about what packages can accomplish this, not looking for help with code review.
- Here's one where the author asks about the differences between GNSS Receiver and GNSS Antenna. The author asked a second question by way of clarifying the question, and rather than helping rephrase the question by editing it, which was quite easy to do, the first choice was to put it on hold instead. We shouldn't be putting questions on hold for simple syntax errors and misapplication of the "one question" guideline as a strict rule.
- Here's one where the author had compatibility issues between GeoServer and Tomcat. A suitable answer was provided in the comments and would easily make for a good "Accepted Answer," as the OP surely won't be the only person to try to mix a GeoServer install with Tomcat. gis.stackexchange.com/questions/319369/
