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We seem to have a history of closing questions about magazine formatting or (effectively) not answering them:

And this one Magazine template? seems on its way to being closed too.

Now although I share some of the reservations expressed with the questions that they are potentially too broad, I think that there are enough commonalities to the issue of magazine formatting (narrow columns, exact placement of images, callouts, grid formatting, etc.) that at least one of these questions deserves a real answer since it is clear that the question is one that will continue to arise.

So instead of just closing every "How to format a magazine" perhaps we should think about constructing a decent community wiki answer.

The problem to me seems to be that there is no middle ground making such question immune to closing: the only way to make such a question acceptable seems to be to break the problem down into its component parts "I want to know how to place text around images", "I want to know how to do narrow columns" etc. But I think this is the whole point of having a question that covers many of these things, so "improving" the question is not the issue here.

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  • With the premise that I haven't voted to close, because I disagree with the closure option, although as you said, the question could use some improvement, I'd like to ask why you think there should be a CW and not just us trying to improve each question case by case as we do with all questions. I'm not against these questions, but if a certain one is not p to standards and the OP is not interested in improving it or following it up with some feedback on the answers, then it deserves to get closed. – Alenanno Dec 14 '15 at 16:30
  • @Alenanno I've added some more based on your comment. – Alan Munn Dec 14 '15 at 16:42
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    In addition to a decent community Wiki answer, this topic can also use a decent question to start. One way to prevent closing could be writing both the Q and A together and make it clear its intent. – Willie Wong Dec 15 '15 at 4:06
  • How can I typeset an article? A thesis? A newspaper? An exam? A letter? A poster? Slides? While I agree that information on these topics is useful, I'm not clear how they can be accommodated on this site. What is needed is something like a meta-question (as opposed to a Meta question) which can request a set of sign-posts to useful information, including questions about specific issues on this site. But there is not really anything like that as it doesn't seem to fit the SE concept. (It might be argued this means the information is better provided elsewhere. Need TeX SE answer everything?) – cfr Dec 16 '15 at 17:59
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    I think we have various questions that do exactly that: Which package to use for presentations ? Beamer, Prosper, or Other, Typesetting exercise sheets, Packages for writing Letter. And I don't really see why they aren't useful resources for the site. Now we have one more. Frankly I don't see the problem really. – Alan Munn Dec 16 '15 at 18:15
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I just have answered Magazine template? because is not a technical question, but it is clear and specific. He do not ask how to make a magazine. He asks if there's anything out there to not make it from scratch. This might be answered narrowly with a "No, sorry", "Sure, go here and there" or "Well, more or less. Look at this and that, and so you get the picture". IMHO should not be closed because the answer could be "I do not know, but you can use multicols in this way ... plus pincipar ... plus wallpaper ... plus ... etc." that evidently need to be a too broad (endless) answer, but this do not mean that the question by itself is broad.

On the other hand, even if the question is not well stated, for people searching for magazine templates any answer could be more useful than find a dead end.

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    Thanks Fran! That's exactly the kind of answer I think is needed. – Alan Munn Dec 15 '15 at 4:39

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