help with "opinion based" closing

Question

My question, "SSL error 14090086 "certificate verify failed" in browser and in curl: how to troubleshoot? [closed]" was closed as "opinion based".

Would anyone be willing to explain in a little more detail what and who determined that it's "opinion based"? (The supplied "opinion-based" KB article isn't really explaining much.) E.g.:

• Do people who take such action have to explain or document why they're taking it?
• Is there a precedent or a process for determining the threshold between opinions and facts? (Any fact including 2+2=4 can technically be construed as "opinion" because even basic arithmetics is based on assumptions and abstractions - which are technically "opinions" and not facts.)
• How do I appeal what I believe is an incorrect closing?

In my specific case, the question was "what steps would you take troubleshooting SSL cert errors in a specific situation?", and while there certainly could be opinions on how to go about it, fact-based answers (not opinions) are invited:

1. What are the possible root causes?
2. What are the steps to confirm or rule out each one?

... with the above two steps being the basis of any diagnostic fact-based process.

See also this: Inappropriate opinion-based closings

Answer 1

The site seems to suffer from frivolous moderation (closing questions as "opinion based" or "duplicate" or "off topic" without providing valid reasons), with lack of accountability and clear moderation policies.

The root cause I believe is a conflict of interest. Users who racked up reputation score sufficient to close questions are rarely ones with any moderation experience. This invites bias where users interested only in answering simple (for them) questions would close ones they have no experience in, or ones that take more than a minimum effort to answer.

I believe this is what happened in this case (read the comments for some context). This happened to me and to others more than a few times, and is likely a systemic issue:

Inappropriate opinion-based closings

This is regretful.

P.S. Moderators and I exchanged a few comments under the question, and most of them (all of mine and some of moderator's) were deleted w/o notice or explanation. Those deletions are also not showing up in the question history - at least not in one visible to me.

So in addition to closing a question as "opinion based" and then explaining that it was actually closed for a different reason ("hypothetical question") - the comments get deleted w/o notice or explanation either.

What a great site this is! :)