Why close a question when all that's needed is a canonical answer?

Question

I am considering adding a bounty to this question when I noticed that one of the reasons available for creating the bounty is:

Canonical answer required

The question is widely applicable to a large audience. A detailed canonical answer is required to address all the concerns.

The reasons for voting to close this particular question are stated as:

There are several possible answers to this, and each hinges on doctrines that are hotly contested ... Since there is no universally accepted answer, ... vote to close as not constructive ...

I believe this to be a valid reason to vote to close, and I've since edited the question to fit more within the site guidelines linked to in the comment (by the way, it'd be nice if the votes to close would be removed or further explanation given so I can improve the question if needed).

But now that I've seen that one of the reasons for the bounty is to encourage more comprehensive, canonical answers that cover a wide audience, why close questions like this when all that's needed is a little push?

Answer 1

The issue seems to be one of terminology. A question that is "broad" is not the same as one that is "widely applicable". The former covers too much topical ground in the question while the later may be a very focused specific question that happens to be useful to a lot of people and so should be answered in detail.

We do occasionally end up with questions that are overview style questions that survey the various beliefs of Christianity. Most of the time people ask these expecting to find out what the truth of the matter is and of course those we have to close. On occasion however we get questions that really are trying to get an overview perspective. These cases might be good candidates for an extra "little push" to keep the answer quality up and get some canonical answers that cover all the bases.

Incidentally, close votes cannot currently be removed even if the voter would like to, but a feature is in the works to make that possible.