Are too many questions being closed because of how they are phrased?

Question

Are too many questions being closed because of how they are phrased?

I don't mean questions that are un-understandable, what are they even asking, but one's which people think are a bad fit for the site because they aren't clearly otherwise.

e.g. this question I had to edit to

How would Hume respond to seeing, rather than an account of, a miracle? Has any contemporary atheist philosopher explicitly tried to refute how Hume would respond?

after getting five close votes.

Before that it read something like

• How would Hume respond to seeing, rather than an account of, a miracle? How do contemporary atheist philosophers respond to this.

Which I concur, is "too broad", if the second sentence is read so broadly that it includes any treatment of 'miracles'. But here's my point: you could very easily charitably read it to mean that. I would suggest an edit, rather than closing the question, which likely won't ever get enough re-open votes to be active now.

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i.e. are too many questions being closed because they are equivocally a bad fit.

Answer 1

No.

Or maybe to be more specific, we can only answer questions based on "how they are phrased."

And when questions are worded in ways that invite open-ended answers or belie deep ambiguities about what would constitute a good answer, these questions should be placed on hold until clarified into something that can be answered. If clarification is not forthcoming, then they should be closed.

Moreover, I think sometimes there's some confusion about what is meant by editing and clarifying the question. The goal isn't to 'get past the censors' or something like that but to genuinely alter the question into one that (a) both asks something the OP wants to ask and (b) produces something for which there is one correct answer* that fits within the SE framework.

The more ambiguities and confusing bits in the question, the less likely it can fulfill criterion (b) here.

At the same time, the more of those issues, the less likely people other than the op can find that core question and answer it. It's not impossible in every case, but everyone here is volunteering their time and efforts -- I am not going to put equal time into this as my day job. Thus fulfilling criterion (a) is primarily up to the OPs who ask questions, because we can't read the minds of others.

As an example of something people can easily do for others, fix spelling mistakes and obvious grammar mistakes. (e.g. "proble" to "problem")

*-(or perhaps something that cuts along the joints in philosophy and produces a limited number of answers that exist in the literature, meaning something where experts are divided on the meaning of a passage in such a way where both are respectable answers; e.g. "what does passage Z mean in the Apology?" often has two answers depending on whether one reads it ironically or not).