Brought up by the flag and comments on How to determine whether a large container is air-tight?"How to determine whether a large container is air-tight?".
I want to address question in which the OP has run into a roadbump in build/calibrating/operating a piece of experimental apparatus, and the question is well defined in terms of fixing the problem.
Note that this particular question is not a great example because the OP is not building an experiment, but I would ask that the case for experimentaly realted question be examined separately from the fate of this particular question.
A user has flagged suggesting that this particular case is an engineering problem and asks for a open ended list of suggestions.
David Z comments that
I do think it's not constructive, as it's just asking for a list, not asking a specifically defined question.
I am going to argue below that this is exactly the kind of question which the Stack Excahnge engine is good at answering and should be explictly allowed.
We should also note that attmepts to open a experimentally specific Stack have not been successful (you'll see that I argued that most such question are on-topic for Physics.SE).
Vaguely related: Experimental technology questions: on topic?
