What is wrong with my question?

Question

My question was closed because 'it needs more details or clarity'. However, nobody has queried any aspect of the question, and it has already received a useful answer. What am I supposed to clarify or explain better?

Answer 1

While the question was reasonably clear (at least clear enough to get an answer that was useful for you), there were two things that could have been better:

1. A minimal example (MWE) was missing.
   • This is bad because now Mico had to write all the code himself, including inventing some math with different heights. You could have taken the time to provide this and make answering easier.
   • It is also bad because no documentclass or other packages were given. This may lead to a solution that does not work for your actual document, which is frustrating for you and for the person that writes the answer.
2. The question asked for "the most effective/elegant way". This is opinion-based and unclear, as you don't provide criteria for when something is effective and/or elegant. It is more or less implied in the question what you mean, and indeed the answer shows a method that can reasonably called effective and elegant, but it would have been better if you had asked a concrete question such as:

I want to define a macro \func that when called as \func{x} it produces output that looks like f \left( #1 \right), and when called as \func{\frac{x}{y}} produces output that looks like f \Bigl( \frac{x}{y} \Bigr).

I'm guessing that these two issues have prompted people to vote to close.

Answer 2

I voted to close the question as "Opinion-based" because of

What is the most effective way to achieve the same thing within a macro? Of course, I could just define \funcbig, \funcBig etc., but is there a more elegant way?   [emphasis mine]

Because of a long-standing bug, only one close reason is listed, despite the fact I don't think that the question "needs more details or clarity".

I've now edited out the offending phrases and voted to reopen the question. Enough votes have accrued, so the question has been successfully reopened.

Answer 3

I voted for closing as “unclear”. You wrote

I have a macro that typesets its arguments inside a set of parentheses \left(...\right). For simplicity, let's say it's

\newcommand{\func}[1]{ \ensuremath{ f \left( #1 \right) } }

though the real one has more symbols in it.

What do you mean by “more symbols”? Different function symbols than f? Maybe. Large arguments? No, because \left( and \right) would suffice. You also say that this is not the code you have.

Of course, everybody should know that \ensuremath isn't good for this job and that \left and \right don't really solve the issue of large arguments, but this might go in an answer.

However, the question lacks examples of use and it's not possible to guess what you have in mind, so the question is unclear and should be either edited or closed.