Was it reasonable for this question to be closed?
Recommended news and culture streaming radio stations (auf Deutsch)? [closed]
I am specifically thinking of an analogue to NPR in the USA, whose stations generally broadcast a wide variety of show formats (news, interviews, talk radio, & entertainment) covering range of newsworthy and cultural topics.
I have done a little bit of research and am somewhat familiar with the landscape--ARD, Deutschlandradio, and Deutsche Welle. But as someone still at the "novice" stage I'm curious to get the opinion of those who are fluent and familiar enough to do a comparison.
(I will be moving to München in the near future and need to seriously brush up on my German. Since I listen to NPR for a good portion of each day, it made sense to find a substitute that I could study from while remaining up to date with cultural events and world affairs.)
The proposal for stack exchanged requested a “site for students having questions about German...” Let me emphasize the word ‘student’. Note also that I made sure to add a parenthetical postscript explaining the relevance and value of the this question to learners of German, or at least those in situations similar to my own, which I will assert is quite common. I will also assert that NPR has a reputation as a valuable resource for learners of English (and also more notably the BBC, for the same reasons), so it makes sense to ask “is there a german equivalent of NPR” [or BBC] from a language-learner's perspective. I was careful to word my question in such a way. To the point: I believe this question to be fully on-topic, and the sort of question that this site would derive value from. Now about the reasons it was closed:
“subjective”--is this standard really going to apply to this stack exchange? This is not Wikipedia. If subjectivity is a requirement for questions asked here, the value of the site diminishes greatly, and personally I will probably never return. I'm not being dramatic: the really interesting questions in language are subjective. There are online dictionaries and grammar guides that are much more complete and better indexed than a stack exchange can ever hope to be. The true value of this site is as a meeting place of native speakers and learners/lovers of German, which is the perfect opportunity to ask and get opinion on relevant, subjective questions of language and language-learning. But let me get specific. Here are some examples of subjective questions of great value to students of German:
- What are some good novels with simple language that are enjoyable to read?
- Is operatic german easy for native speakers to understand?
- Which German words have a very interesting etymological history? (This one was asked, and closed despite some quality answers.)
- How rude is “Quatsch!”? (This one was asked by Tim, who by the way voted to close my question and the one on etymology. It's currently ranked 6th on the overall top questions.)
- Good movies for learners? (Also on the list of top questions.)
These are all valuable questions, and all of them subjective. And they are primarily the kind of question that a) learners of German are interested in, and b) this site can uniquely provide answers to. If ‘objectivity’ is accepted as a standard for moderation here, the chilling effect will be significant. I, for one, would have no interest in participating.
“argumentative”--how was this question in any way argumentative? In my ideal scenario I would have gotten 4-5 answers from people living in Germany who had previously lived stateside (or vice-versa), with their opinions of the radio, television, or podcast programs that are most analogous to the type of programming on NPR. And hopefully I would have gotten 4-5 completely different answers, so that I could have tried each and made an opinion for myself. I made sure not to ask for pros or cons of each, or phrase it in such a way that might spark a debate. I asked for “Recommended ... radio stations”, not “The best ... radio stations”. And I should point out, there was no debate in the answers that I have received so far.
PS: Right before I hit submit I realized “argumentative” might have been taken by the moderator to mean “debatable”, which is not at all the same thing and really a synonym for “subjective“. If that were the case I think the distinction should be made clear to moderators.