Why was this question put on hold?

Question

I saw that my 30 month old question: Converting from SLD to Carto CSS? was put on hold with the reason as 'off-topic'

Firstly I just do not see how this question is off-topic. It is a question about GIS software, and is asking a narrow, to the point question.

I can see that Iant has commented:

I'm voting to close this question as there is no solution to this problem

Is this some kind of new policy? Are we going to just close questions which are unanswered? What benefit will we derive from doing so?

In my opinion this was a valid question, and 6 others felt that it was useful and clear. So why exactly was it put on hold as off-topic?

Answer 1

I suspect that this question was put On Hold after your comment:

We ended up writing the CartoCSS from scratch. It didn't take that long, and our designer was more happy writing the CSS, than he ever was fiddling around with the XML.

When I read that I think "Oh, he no longer has a requirement for a SLD to Carto CSS".

If that was @Iant's thinking too, then I think it would have been better to use our recently modified custom close reason from Improving wording of "non-reproducible" custom close reason? because these words from that would seem to apply:

Changes to ... the asker's circumstances may have rendered the question obsolete ...

From the same Meta GIS SE Q&A there is additional advice which I think will apply to the question that you are asking about:

the mechanism to re-open a question is already there for those cases where anyone may use it (or any close reason) overzealously

If you are still looking for "a SLD to Carto CSS" then I think you should revise your question to incorporate any relevant content from the comments and stress that you are still looking for a solution despite your workaround. That should trigger its re-entry into the Re-open queue, and if not, then flag a moderator to review it.