Twice recently I've answered questions that seemed clear and answerable to me, and then later the questions were put on hold as too broad. I try to be a good SE citizen; I don't knowingly answer questions that ought to be closed instead, and I try to avoid making assumptions that need to be clarified by the OP before a good answer can be written. These post-answer closures make me wonder if I'm misunderstanding some of our guidelines, or perhaps just not thinking creatively enough about things that ought to be clarified.
How to have a religious discussion with someone when you're not religious? deals with a skeptic (the OP) having a conversation about religion with a deeply-religious person and asks how the OP can approach bible discussions without either of them becoming irritated. That seems answerable to me, and in my experience lots of people have that problem so it seems like a valuable question for the site.
In How to explain that you're upset that your girlfriend prefers to stay with her family at Christmas?, the OP and OP's girlfriend disagree about how to spend a holiday and the OP wants to know how to explain his position. In the question I see an OP who's a little too self-focused and insufficiently perceptive of how the other person might feel about what he's doing, so -- without calling it out explicitly (hey, I could be wrong) -- I wrote an answer that tries to help the OP see the bigger picture while still (of course) answering the question. How to share major holidays is a common problem that couples have, especially when kids are involved, so this also seems like a useful question for the site.
In neither case do I believe my answer is the be-all and end-all of things. I think my answers are good, but that other people could provide good answers maybe better than mine, too. Except they can't because the questions are closed.
What am I failing to understand about breadth in questions?
