Question: I read [this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42041948/making-boxes-around-circles-with-numbers) question and flagged it as *too broad* along with some constructive comments. 

The question was how to make an user draw shapes in a window and then calculate how many circles were enclosed, with some restrictions. I commented what was wrong with the question and gave some guidelines on how the questioner could solve the problem. He/she commented back and said that the guidelines I provided was the answer he/she was looking for.

**Is it on topic to ask for *guidelines* to solve a bigger problem?**

Some acceptable answers contains no actual code but instead general guidelines or pseudo-code, so it seems to be acceptable in certain cases. But in many cases I would believe that these questions are too broad since there are many possible ways to answer them, but I cannot find anything in [what can I ask?](https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) and [what should I avoid?](https://stackoverflow.com/help/dont-ask) about these types of questions. 

And still, too broad is defined as *"There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format"*. An answer with a couple of bullet points don't need to be too long and thus not too broad. Could it be that these questions aren't specific enough?

I understand that asking about specific algorithms is on-topic but is asking *"What are the procedures to implement a help pop-up window?"* a valid question? In other words; questions that are about bigger concepts than just one algorithm.

Answer: 
Asking how to *go about* doing something is definitely on-topic, and many times such questions and their answers are more useful than questions just asking for code. Such requests *can* still be too broad if there are too many possible answers or good answers would be too long for the format. 

Who knows, such questions may even eventually be able to be solved very simply using a new built-in method, library, etc.
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> Is it on topic to ask for guidelines to solve a bigger problem?
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Lets put it this way: asking about how to get to the moon is too broad, asking how to build the rocket to get to the moon is too broad, asking about what route has to be taken to get to the moon is too broad; asking about how to get telemetry out of a device that happens to be to give you the information you need to calculate the route in your rocket to get to the moon, is not too broad.