How far to go with too localized?

Question

There are a few questions which I feel may be too localized, but I'm not quite ready to use the close vote. A few examples.

Are there beaches on the East Coast (US) where one can camp without a permit?

Where in Europe is wild camping permitted?

Are there any cheap 1:25K electronic maps for the UK or Europe?

Can I sail a raft on a European river with commercial traffic?

Is it legal to camp on private property in Russia?

Where in the Alps is it safe to drink the water without filtering?

What is the general consensus as to what constitutes too localized for The Great Outdoors?

Answer 1

None of those questions are too localized. It's a common misconception that I need to dispel early on. A lot of uses will come to ask very specific questions about specific destinations. That's awesome! We don't close localized questions, we close questions that are "TOO" localized.

So what does "too localized" mean?

I'm going to repost an answer from Skeptics SE because it exemplifies the misconceptions about "too localized."

https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/547/32

I disagree that these particular questions are "too localized." The Stack Exchange UI is not very good at explaining what this reason means.

"Too localized" should be used for very tiny geographic regions or vanishingly small periods of time. It is used when a question cannot possibly be answered because nobody participating in the site is likely to know the answer, and even if it were answered, nobody else would care.

For me, the canonical "too localized" question would be:

Why is there a green Honda Civic parked out in front of my house?

This is too localized because:

1. Who cares?
2. Is it even still there? Go check.
3. What are the chances that this question could ever be answered in a way that would benefit anyone else?
4. Now is it there?

I have been dismayed to see knee-jerk closing of questions as "too localized" throughout Stack Exchange simply because they mention a time span or because they mention a geography. I think some people have misunderstood this close reason to mean ... "anything time-bound or location-bound must be closed."

In this particular case the Sklivvz reasonably thought that the questions are too localized in time because they reflect constantly changing knowledge or rapidly changing events.

This would be a valid concern, however, Stack Exchange was specifically designed to adapt well to rapidly-changing events. That's why it has Wiki features. Like Wikipedia, we are not content to wait for the first historians to write the book. We're happy to answer questions in the context of what is true today, knowing that as facts change, the answers can easily be edited or replaced.

Answer 2

Just my £0.02 - I wouldn't say any of those questions were too localised personally - specialist, specific, somewhat localised questions are good because they enable precise answers.

If it was unlikely that anyone would ever need the answer to those questions I'd agree they were too localised but as far as I can see that's not the case - I for one could use an extensive list of wild camping spots in Europe for instance!

Answer 3

Recall that on the proposal page, there was a fairly highly upvoted announcement (+27) about this:

I think that geographically-specific questions are perfectly appropriate, as long as they are tagged as such. Think of how Stack Overflow is so successful in having vary narrowly-targeted programming questions, about obscure languages. I think that same success will probably apply to this audience as well.

I agree with this, we should err on the side of inclusion.

Now, let's look at the scope of the particular questions you mentioned.

• Are there beaches on the East Coast (US) to camp without a permit?
  • Applies to anyone who likes the outdoors and lives on the fairly heavily populated East Coast, as well as anyone likely to visit there, a nontrivial number.
• Where in Europe is wild camping permitted?
  • All of Europe? Sounds good.
• Are there any cheap 1:25K electronic maps for the UK or Europe? -I'm not sure what 1:25K is, but it sounds like this applies to all of Europe again.
• Is it legal to camp on private property in Russia?
  • Russia's an awfully big country, and beyond its native inhabitants, I'd imagine there are people who would go there for vacation and benefit from this information.
• Where in the Alps is it safe to drink the water without filtering?
  • Getting more localized, but the Alps are a large and well-known mountain range, and a popular tourist destination. Sounds fine to me.
• Can I sail a raft on an European river with commercial traffic?
  • I can see how some people might see this as too localized. However, consider this: is sailing a raft on-topic? It's an outdoors activity, so I'd argue so. Now, given that, what's the scope of the question? All rivers in Europe with commercial traffic.

So, all these questions should remain open. It's difficult to make rules to govern something like this, so until we do agree on some, I suggest we be very conservative about closing questions for this.

Answer 4

If the answers to the question would be useful to a local outdoorsman, the question should stand.

Answer 5

Stackoverflow prided itself on specific technical questions, so my initial thought would be some loose metric like how many people visit the place annually. For example, I think questions relating to Isle Royale National Park in lake superior, such as details about the ferries, or what kind of animals/insects live there, wouldn't be too localized. Isle Royale is visited by only about 15,000 people per year, the least of all the United States national parks.

So, I'd think that if at least 10,000 people visit a given area annually, that's probably a reasonable metric to extrapolate how much of it is useful to others.

I think it scales more with visitorship more so than acreage, because asking something very specific to say one of Yellowstone's geysers is obviously very localized, however its visited by so many people yearly, that it could be a reasonable question.

Answer 6

What about even more localized? Such as, "Is a guide required to climb Mt. Cotopaxi?" or "Is it reasonably safe to climb Granite Peak, WY without a rope?"