I've seen a rather high number number of off-topic flags that I have then marked as on-topic. In many cases I see close votes pile on in what could be interpreted as brigading.

On topic?

This question caught my eye in particular: Image alt not showing at magento product page

The question asks "how can I add an alt tag to an image in a Magento product page"... and has been marked by 3 separate site users as off-topic. However, at the time of this writing there are two answers.

According to our help document for the on-topic guidelines this matches the top three points:

• It does not involve custom code
• It does not involve a third-party vendor
• No 3rd party developer can be contacted for support.

So it looks to me like it is actually on-topic. Perhaps the close votes are trying to signify that the "fix" is not Magento-centric and this is a gray area? At what point do we stop helping locate where to place a change because the change itself is "simplistic"?

Off Topic?

Let's review a type of question which I believe, by our guidelines, is likely off-topic.

Questions about Varnish aren't too rare around Magento.SE - but questions specifically about Turpentine (an OSS 3rd party module by Nexcess) are very very rare.

However, they do have their own tag but they break the community guidelines:

• It involves custom code
• It involves a third-party vendor
• A 3rd party developer can be contacted for support

A question just posted referenced it in the title: http://magento.stackexchange.com/questions/82490/magento-turpentine-excluded-parameters-in-vcl-produce-incorrect-redirect

There are no answers at the time of this writing, and no off-topic votes at the time of this writing.

Getting to the point

Which leads me to my point:

1. Have our "on-topic" guidelines changed?
2. If so, do we need to update that document?
3. Is the document sparse for a reason? Should we be more explicit?

and lastly:

4. Is this question in fact off-topic? Why?

(I submit that this question is on-topic and have voted accordingly. But I would like the community to weigh in here.)

I realize that Q to A ratio is important for the overall health of the site, but let's be careful not to appear to be unhelpful in the process.