How to bring questions like this on-topic?

Question

A couple of days ago, I asked a question: Which South American countries are the most vegetarian-friendly?

It was closed as opinion-based, which I largely expected.

I feel that it is answerable because there's a couple of pieces of evidence one could use to make an argument for one country or another. (I specifically asked for "which countries" rather than "which country) in the hopes the former would be more answerable.

Specifically, I'm thinking:

• Number of vegetarian/vegan restaurants in the country. For example, I can tell you there are 205 veg* restaurants in Seattle whereas there's only 35 such results in Spokane, the second largest city in Washington.
• You could also look at censuses of vegetarians and vegans in a given country. This Wikipedia page, for example, gives values of 10% for Sweden and 9% for Austria, which would be suitable for a question about Europe.
• I think most of us have experience cultural differences in eating vegetarian in different places. Subway used to have a veggie patty I rather liked, and I asked for it in Montana once and got a blank stare. Clearly, there are cultural differences one could bring up.
• Other statistics, for example this Seattle Times article uses food budget reports to estimate the most and least vegetarian neighborhoods based on the proportion of their food budget they spend on meat.
• Furthermore, one could imagine that a given country might have a government initiative to promote vegetarianism; or could mandate labeling of vegetarian products, a country that has done that is probably a friendlier place to go.

Anyway, I think this sort of question could be very valuable to Veg.SE. I mean, there's only so many nutrition questions to ask, and I think many people would benefit from being able to ask what countries or cities, etc., would be easier/more fun to visit for someone on a veg* diet.

How can I rephrase my question to bring it on-topic? I'm open to discussion.

Answer 1

Ironically, by seeking a more objective standard for your question, it starts to become "too broad" rather than "opinion-based". There are a lot of possible ways to measure vegetarianism (statistics, policies, native cuisine, etc.) -- and which of those is the "best" way to evaluate friendliness is still pretty subjective. One user might think it's social acceptance, another might think it's availability of vegetarian foods...

It sounds like you're trying to choose a travel destination and eat at restaurants frequently, so perhaps narrowing the focus to just that would be your best option. There's still a chance that will be too broad (vegetarian penetration is probably better in Buenos Aires than more rural Argentina, for example), so I hope other users can also weigh in on how your question could be answerable.

Answer 2

Vote and add comments as to what you all want to bring the question up to the standards you want as a user base.

Welcoming new users and adding specific information in the comments is critical to growth.

When there are low quality questions or answers, comment and encourage are the best for growth and development of your site.