Why was my question about non-standard projections closed?

Question

The question I've asked:

projection and matrices

was meant for me to get a head start on some of the more exotic aspects of game programming: the problem of projections, that can't be represented by matrices. After obtaining an answer I thought I'd go on and research some literature about the indices I'd obtain. Of course, an over-zealous moderator reacted to a flag by a user, who is perfectly content with orthographic and linear perspective projections. I've edited the question and flagged the moderator as per stackoverflow instructions. The response I've got from the moderator was this:

I've tried to fix my question. I don't need a novella answer, just some examples, so I get starting points to look through the literature. – user1095108 21 hours ago declined - flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention

Meaning he did not understand (or even cared), why I flagged him at all. His further comment reinforces this view:

@JoshPetrie This is what moderator flags are for. First the flag, then the meta-site. – user1095108 35 mins ago No, it isn't. Moderator flags are for content that requires moderator intervention. Reopening a post due to an edit does not, there is a system in place for the community to do that. That's why I have rejected both of your flags against this post. Please don't flag it again. – Josh Petrie♦ 33 mins ago

Showing he's unaware of stackoverflow policies, further he's trying to dissuade from flagging again. I've given him a link to the relevant web page and he commented:

You flagged the question twice. Your first flag was rejected, explaining that this is not a scenario where moderator intervention is necessary (particularly since your edits did not make the question less broad). Your subsequent flag was rejected because you are just flag-spamming at that point. If you would like to discuss this further, please post on Game Development Meta. – Josh Petrie♦ 24 mins ago

Inflating my gross misconduct of flagging the question twice to "flag spamming". Now questions: is my question really too broad and why? Could it be salvaged? My view is, that the moderator closed impulsively.

Answer 1

Your question (currently) reads:

Can you please provide some examples of such projections and why they might be used in a game application?

This question is too broad. Full stop. It's asking for a list of answers, each of which are equally viable options (or alternatively a single answer which contains all possible alternative projections, which is impractical to compile). Your original question was actually slightly better, or at least heading in a better direction, because it mentioned the idea of a Camera class supporting atypical projections. But not a single one of the edits made to the question as of this posting corrects its "too broad" nature.

So, you flagged the post after you edited it, asking to get it re-opened. This itself is not really a problem, although it's not a particularly good use of a moderator flag since editing a question puts it into the re-open review queue.

(I am aware of the guidelines that you linked, but (a) that does not mandate that all such flags must be acted on by re-opening the question and (b) I suspect those guidelines were written prior to the more-recent change that automatically puts edited questions into the re-open queue, or at least are less relevant now since that feature exists.)

Regardless, your edit did not make the question re-openable, and as such I rejected the flag, choosing one of the (pre-defined) reasons available to me. There are several such pre-defined options, a few of which were potentially applicable. I chose "doesn't require intervention" simply because your edit wasn't sufficiently good enough to warrant re-opening by unilateral vote. I did not elect to use the custom decline reason field because I didn't think it was warranted here; perhaps I was wrong in that respect.

Then you flagged the question again, with effectively the same reason; that isn't appropriate use of the flag system. "Spamming" in that context did not mean you are flagging too many times, it meant you are re-flagging without sufficient further action or change, which is not appropriate.

I did not close the question impulsively (on a whim). In fact, I saw it in its original form and left it alone for a while to think about how it could be tweaked to make it more appropriate. When I came back, you'd edited it to make it more broad, so I closed it then. It was hardly a snap decision; I rarely make snap decisions when closing questions, unless they are spam.

There's really no way to make a question asking for a list salvageable here. It's just not the appropriate venue. However, your original question had some mention of implementing non-standard projections in camera classes, and a question that proposed a specific non-standard projection and asked about how you might represent the parameters to that projection in a Camera that also supported a "typical" projection might be interesting.