If a user didn't want to hear opinions, but the answers were primarily opinion-based, would the question be closed?

Question

I'm talking about my question: How far should one go to protect his PC? Closed as primarily opinion-based.

But I never wanted to hear opinions, I wanted facts, like "Is FTP safe?", And the fact is "No".

Maybe I didn't ask my question right, maybe I should have asked: "Is there any antivirus capable of detecting all Malware?."

And that is not an opinion based question, you see before I asked my question, I did some research, according to pcmag.com, who tested all the well known antivirus released in 2013, no antivirus is perfect. What does that mean? it means that 1 antivirus is not enough.

I personally have tested nod32 (Esset), Norton, avg, bitdefender, malwarbytes, and avast, none is perfect.

So I'm not the kind of guys who asks about opinions, otherwise I would have asked on yahooanswers.com, maybe on the survey section, where i can get like 20 opinions easily.

Besides, I tried to explain that i tried MWB and AVG and I showcase the results, to try and explain that I need precise answers, I asked 3 separate question, so you could understand my point of view clearly.

I tried to make this question as scientific as possible, I never wanted opinions. But the answers weren't great, i had to pick the one that sounds better, but It's not my fault, I didn't asked for opinions, i asked for data and test, it's a security issue, when did security issues become about opinions?

"Sir, we have a worm, no in my opinion it's a RAT, no, in my opinion you should restart the server and everything will be fine" That's how you see it right?

on yahoo answers, I'd get 20 answers, people debating why they're antivirus is the best, that's why that site exists, people love to give opinions. I want data, facts, tests.

So lets come back to the original question:

If a user didn't want to hear opinions, but the answers were primarily opinion-based, would the question be closed?

Answer 1

Generally, if your question attracts a lot of answers that are merely statements of opinions, then it might be the fault of the question, but it doesn't have to be. In the former case, the question should be closed, in the latter, the answers should be downvoted and/or deleted.

In my opinion, both "Is FTP safe?" is very opinion-based.

If FTP is safe can rely on several external factors (where is it used? WAN? LAN? locally?) and on your definition of what safe even is.

"Is there any antivirus capable of detecting all Malware?." is a very simple question that can only be answered with "no". Even if you would use every anti-malware package that exists, then you still wouldn't be able to detect all malware. Just because there are simply certain cases that would make it impossible for such a software to detect a certain malware.

This is only a subset of the questions you asked in your post though. Your overall question can not be reasonably answered, it can only collect answers containing what people think would be a correct answer (when it is merely their opinion).

Let's have a closer look at why this type of question is a problem.

When you ask how far you have to go to protect your PC, I would summarize that you want to know (from an expert) which countermeasures you would have to deploy to avoid being infected by a malware or possibly having your system intruded by an attacker.

Now someone might answer "I use SuperScanner 2013 Ultimate and I have never had any problems." Which is great for him, but it doesn't answer your question and it's not the answer you're looking for. This is exactly why you posted this meta question, because you don't want answers like that on your question and you might think that these answers caused your question to be closed even though you didn't want them in the first place.

So, let's assume I am an expert and I was to answer your question with something like "I never connect my workstations directly to the internet, if I need a file, I download it from a separate machine and then copy it to my main workstation offline. Also, I only use GNU Hurd as my operating system." Is that answer any better? No, it isn't.

So, what exactly would a proper answer to your question look like?

Studies by Kramer et. al., Johnson et. al. and Lucrov et. al. in 2009, 2010 and 2012 respectively have shown conclusively that installing ACME AMP Plutonium Edition on your Windows workstations will prevent 78% of all intrusion attacks and 82% of all infections of known viruses. Any other anti-malware package proved less effective. Installing additional anti-malware software did not increase the measurable security of the system.

Oh, yeah, that would be awesome. Except that studies like that don't exist. And if they would exist, what would a study from 4 years ago mean today? A ton of new malware would have been written since then. You also can't measure security. You might have 100% protection from virus infections and then fall victim to a phishing attack.

Bottom line, there are no proper answers to a question like that. If you want to have a talk about how to improve your existing system security, join the chat and get some opinions there.