This is in regards to the following question: Are there known examples where an evolved mechanism "echoes" one originally provided by the environment?, although it also speaks to a much broader point regarding the site's scope.
The question linked above is quite a difficult one to ask, because I'm a professional in quite a specialised field, and I'm hoping to obtain answers from other professionals, about something that's really very specific. (I would say it's much more specific than the vast majority of questions on this site.) However, despite my attempts to make the question comprehensible to a broader audience than the one it's really intended for, a selection of users in the comments and answers failed to understand it, interpreting it instead as something very simple, along the lines of "please give me examples of something that's evolved."
Some users understood the question perfectly well, but some didn't, and as a consequence of this misunderstanding the question has been closed as "too broad". I've wracked my brain trying to think of some way to avoid the misunderstanding that caused this, but I really have no idea how to do it. I think someone with the knowledge required to answer the question will not have any problem understanding it, but I don't know how to simultaneously make it more comprehensible to a lay audience, so that it will be allowed to remain open.
Moreover, it seems a bit problematic that I should have to do this at all. My experiences here have generally been unwelcoming, with three out of four of my questions accumulating close votes from the same small set of users, who in each case either had trouble understanding the question, or misinterpreted it as asking for something much broader than it actually was. I repeat that I'm a professional scientist with many papers to my name (though crucially I'm not a biologist, which I guess might be the core of the problem), and I know that these questions will be easily comprehensible to someone who can answer them. It's right that questions should be closed if they're badly posed, but on this site I get the distinct impression that questions can be unwelcome merely because they're difficult. It will be hard to attract professionals to your site if others have similar experiences.
In any case, my questions are (1) what, if anything, can I do to have this particular question re-opened, and (2) is it worth having a broader discussion about the questions you would like to accept that might come from, or be aimed at, a specialised audience; or which might come from professionals (like me) in other fields?