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I asked a question a few days ago. It got closed for needing to be “more focused.”

According to the site guidelines , in the Needs more focus part, it says:

This can often be fixed by breaking the question into multiple questions or focusing on a specific part of the problem.

I asked just one question, which is in bold in the post, and which I repeat: “Doesn’t that make metallic conductors not obey Ohm’s law (since the voltage is not directly proportional to current)? Or am I wrong (if so, how)?”

If your question has many valid answers (but no way to determine which - if any - are correct), then it probably needs to be more focused to be successful in our format.

I don’t think it has “many valid answers.” Either you can answer it with a “yes”, or a “no” and give reason(s).

Please edit the question to limit it to a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer. Avoid asking multiple distinct questions at once. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question.

My question is limited to a specific problem: on whether we can correctly say if Ohm’s law is satisfied in metallic conductors or not. I didn’t ask multiple questions. I wrote a bunch of details (to show I had done research and to share my understanding, but I received a “much ado about nothing” comment), and I explained why I thought Ohm’s law wasn’t valid. And it’s possible to identify an adequate answer: the one by Philip Wood not only answered a “yes” to my question in part (a) of his answer, but he further explained that there are two versions of Ohm’s law in macroscopic form which I hadn’t even considered, where in part (b) the answer to my question is “no” (but please remember I hadn’t thought about this); clearly he answered my question and shared a great observation.

So why was my question closed for not being focused enough?

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    $\begingroup$ Only one of the close voters can tell you why they voted to close, but after reading the rather long question I'm puzzled why this question is so long just to ask whether Ohm's law is really fulfilled in real-life situations or not. Context is good, but starting a discussion of resistance with "In 1827, Georg Ohm published..." strikes me as definitely overkill. I.e. I would suggest the lack of focus here is not in there being multiple questions, but in a lot of extraneous detail surrounding a rather simple question. $\endgroup$
    – ACuriousMind Mod
    Nov 9, 2021 at 11:12
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    $\begingroup$ Also note that the close reason given you is based on the plurality of close vote reasons - not all voters may have selected that reason. $\endgroup$
    – Jon Custer
    Nov 9, 2021 at 14:17

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I could be wrong, but it could be the case that users saw a really long post broken up into multiple parts and thought "this isn't focused". You do only ask one question, so I don't think the close reason is completely justified.

However, the post does read less like a question and more like, "Here is a point I want to make, and here is all of my evidence supporting it. Oh, and since this is a Q&A site I'll put on a question that is essentially just 'Am I right or wrong?'" I don't think this is your intention, but that was my first impression.

Because of this, it's hard to follow where you are going throughout the post, and therefore it seems unfocused. Honestly, you could greatly reduce the content of your post to make the question more obvious and focused.

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    $\begingroup$ Yes the question is waaaaay too long: it’s not focused in this sense. It is also borderline opinion-based. I would not have closed it but in its current form I’m not surprised it was received poorly. $\endgroup$
    – ZeroTheHero
    Nov 11, 2021 at 1:11
  • $\begingroup$ I've now eliminated all the background and only kept the question. Also, I doesn't look as opinion-based. Is it better now? $\endgroup$
    – alejnavab
    Nov 17, 2021 at 3:27

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