A recent question about Painting ritualistic murder in a "good-guy" light? is clearly a what-to-write question.
It does not ask: How do I go about, if I have a problem with motivating a change in how one character evaluates the behavior of another character? That would be a how-to-write question. Instead it asks: "How can I get my character to" (that's the exact words) change his assessment? And that's a what-to-write question. The asker doesn't use their writing as an example for a question about a general approach to writing, an answer to which would be useful for other writers as well. Instead what they want want is a solution to their writing problem. And that's asking what to write.
So why does one of the highest rep users answer an off topic question, and why isn't this question put on hold as off topic?
What am I missing about the site rules?