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Early in my participation on this site, I asked the following question: Why Do People Use "Precision" Bidding in Bridge? which was deemed barely acceptable (not closed). A more seasoned person on the site was kind enough to point out to me that the redeeming feature of the question was: "I was taught that "higher points meant higher bids, a rule that precision blatantly violates." That shifted the focus from the SYSTEM itself (very broad) to this one FEATURE of the system (much narrower).

Today, someone asked a similarly broad question: https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/4816/what-are-the-benefits-and-drawbacks-of-this-bidding-system I considered voting to close it, but instead decided to propose two fixes: 1) ask for the hand in question so we could discuss the hand, rather than the system, (which the OP provided), and 2) added a "last line" (since rolled back) that said that such a system essentially started bidding at the "two" level, by using a "forcing" one.

Was the original question overly broad? If yes, did the provision of the particular hand narrow the question sufficiently to be answered? Did the proposed "last line" sufficiently narrow the question by providing a "hook," (the feature of the "two" level bidding, as opposed to the whole system)?

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    In theory I have no objection to the addition of a "hook" to improve one of my questions - in this particular case I felt the hook contained inaccurate information which would have taken the question in a direction I didn't want it to go! I agree that the addition of the hand was a good idea: while it wasn't specifically relevant to my question, it provided some very useful context that could have been useful in formulating an answer.
    – thesunneversets
    Commented Sep 22, 2011 at 16:34

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I think any modification to a question still needs to address the OP's problem, whatever it may be: even if I would vote to close a question as it stands, and if I thought I could edit the question to keep it open, I think it's the OP's right to roll back my edit and explain what it doesn't address.

With respect to this question, I voted to close not because I feel the topic is too broad, but because even if the question is narrowed, I feel it is still asking for opinions. I looked at the link that Aryabhata provided, and (keeping in mind that the link is to a forum, where discussion is accepted and encouraged) saw that comments there focused on what people liked and didn't like about the system, answers that would frame the question as subjective here. More importantly, answers like that really provide no way of knowing whether or not strengths we see would be benefits for the OP or others in similar positions.

A more focused alternative, I think, would be something like "My partner and I usually use Acol, but we have problems with (some specific types of) hands or contracts. Would Fantunes help us address those issues?"

I see this as similar to a discussion we had earlier on meta; this answer by Pat and the resulting comments are what I have in mind. I would like to see questions like this become questions that address the OP's concerns with answers that are supported with specific documentation or first-hand experience; I'm just not sure how to do that.

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