Voting abuse - why is a perfectly good question being down-voted?

Question

I asked a question on EL&U which was taken upon negatively. It is linked here: “Is "tell advice" not idiomatic over "give advice"?”

Let's look up the definition of "idiomatic" from the OED:

(1a) Relating to or exhibiting the forms of expression, grammatical constructions, phrases, etc. used in a distinctive way in a particular language, dialect, or language variety, formerly especially those considered nonstandard or colloquial. Now usually spec.: established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from the meanings of the individual words. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/91033?redirectedFrom=Idiomatic#eid>

From my research people did not accept Google books/websites/etc. to be a good reflection of ‘idiomacy’, so I consulted Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) where “tell advice” is being used.

I was challenging a statement that it was not used by native speakers at all. This is extremely misleading. It’s like saying Standard English is the best so we will ignore all other dialects. A person notes that this could be “hyperbolic”, that people do but only a small minority, “microscopic in fact”. However to me, exaggeration doesn’t mask a false truth.

Here are my arguments:

• The OED definition mentions nothing about native speakers. So perhaps people should just focus on less on whether a person is a native speaker, but on the wider sense of “idiomatic”. How is idiomacy tested? Is it impossible for a non-native but fluent speaker to speak idiomatically?

• My evidence does show that native speakers are using from COCA. Google also showed 50,000 cases of where “tell advice” is used. Of course there are some questionable cases. It’s almost impossible to validate every source, however I feel like among the mass of 50,000 that it would be wrong to predict that there is not a single native speaker out there. What is undetermined is the actual % of 50,000 cases is “tell advice” being used by a native speaker.

• Some dictionary definitions of idiomatic mention “native speakers” but I feel this is too simplistic of a definition as mentioned above.

• If only a minority of native speakers is only using it, does that make it negligible or removed as an option at all? Because people are alluding to the latter, completely disregarding the alternative and justifying their use of “give advice” only on the basis that it is used more, not considering other options; even though “tell advice” violates no grammatical rule.

• I would say: It is idiomatic in the community, that “tell advice” is being used. Perhaps not idiomatic in Standard English, but still in a community of native speakers or dialect - however small attesting its use. I think this fits in line with OED’s definition:

[...] Relating to or exhibiting the forms of expression, grammatical constructions, phrases, etc. used in a distinctive way in a particular language, dialect, or language variety [...]

Here is what CJ Dennis said in chat, which I complete agree with, particularly the second paragraph. :

There could arise some population of native English speakers for whom "tell advice" is idiomatic. It could become idiomatic in every English variety. However, it isn't at present and there's no evidence it ever was. "Long time no see" is ungrammatical but idiomatic, and therefore "good" English.

So there's no argument from a grammatical perspective to proscribe the use of a particular phrase, only the descriptive approach.

What baffles me is that people failed to see the merit of my question and just downvoted. If you look at the question I acknowledged from the get go that “give advice” was the most common variant, yet people focused more on disputing the evidence against “tell advice” as opposed to “give advice” saying it’s not natural and unidiomatic. COCA says otherwise.

I don’t understand why a perfectly good question is being treated like this. People are voting to close with no good basis or proper reason other than to incite that they do not like the usage of “tell advice”.

Clearly, it is a question well within the scopes of “English Language & Usage” but it’s not being given the merit of what it deserves.

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Why do I have a reputation change on my reputation page that says "voting corrected"?

When a single user continually votes (up or down) on many of your posts within a short period of time, the system considers these votes to be invalid and removes them. This could happen for a variety of reasons, such as a user finding a user's great answer and visiting all of their posts to upvote them, or a user getting into an argument with another user and downvoting their posts indiscriminately in revenge. No matter the cause, this sort of systematic targeted voting is not considered normal behavior and the system will not allow it.

If such a voting pattern continues to happen between two users mutually or from one user towards another, or otherwise falls outside of normal voting patterns, moderators and/or developers may investigate the matter; intentionally voting merely to reduce or inflate another user's reputation is considered abuse.

Such votes will generally be invalidated as part of an automated process that runs every day, but may also be invalidated manually by the staff after an investigation. When the votes are invalidated, the reputation gain or loss from the votes is undone, which results in a record in the recipient's reputation history labelled "voting corrected".

https://english.stackexchange.com/help/serial-voting-reversed

I have had instances where my other answers have been downvoted simply because they did not like the question I asked above or that I was 'right'. If the down-vote are persistent and the down-votes are from the same group people - that can be construed as voting abuse.

Voting up a question or answer signals to the rest of the community that a post is interesting, well-researched, and useful, while voting down a post signals the opposite: that the post contains wrong information, is poorly researched, or fails to communicate information. The more that people vote on a post, the more certain future visitors can be of the quality of information contained within that post – not to mention that upvotes are a great way to thank the author of a good post for the time and effort put into writing it!

My post doesn't contain wrong information, is not poorly researched and does not fail to communicate information.

Even if it was to contain 'misinformation'* which is subjective, a user argues here:

I agree the wording "extreme cases" is very wrong here. A post providing misinformation is not an extreme case, it happens every day. That section in the help center wants to point out you can use down-votes as last resort when helping improving through comments doesn't help, and that is a good thing.

Contradictory guidelines for downvoting

*My question does not 'misinform' anyone. I say that "give advice" is the most common usage and that the grammatical 'tell advice' is just as valid as its counterpart and I have used evidence to support this.

The help section says:

When you vote down, you are nudging that content "down" the page, so it will be seen by fewer people. Voting down answers is not something we want you to take lightly, so it is not free.

[...]

What are the alternatives to downvoting? The upvote privilege comes first because that's what you should focus on: pushing great content to the top. Downvoting should be reserved for extreme cases. It's not meant as a substitute for communication and editing.

Instead of voting down:

• If the post is spammy or offensive, flag it.
• If the question is duplicate or off-topic, flag it for moderator attention.
• If something is wrong, please leave a comment or edit the post to correct it.

https://english.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-down

Answer 1

The OP, @aesking, told the community:

To me “to give someone advice” is the most common variant but it sounds phrasally and unidiomatic. However, to be politically correct I think “tell some advice” is more appropriate as personally in my grammar you cannot “give X advice”, you can only give physical objects but you can tell or speak advice/words.

What about “to give information”? What about “to give an opinion”? What about “to give an answer”? Isn't any response to a request or question, written or spoken, supplying that which was asked?

The OP's rational and justification is theirs to follow but they have yet to prove that their idiolect or that of other native speakers, tell someone advice, is the most natural and common in the English-speaking world, i.e. idiomatic.

Addendum

I've given an answer to the OP, which I hope will clarify further. Unfortunately, due to the number of downvotes, their post no longer appears on the homepage. And my upvote has not helped to budge it out of oblivion; I'm also curious to see whether more users agree with the other answers posted, which are all basically saying that "tell someone advice" is uncommon in idiomatic speech. Not one answer has claimed it to be ungrammatical and I seriously doubt that @Shoe, as noted by @aesking, claimed otherwise.

Answer 2

The post starts off OK. "I was told X is true. I have found evidence to support the opposite, that ¬X is true."

However, instead of ending with "Is my argument that ¬X is true reasonable (therefore invalidating X)?" you end with "Please back me up and support my opinion that ¬X is true". (Note this is paraphrasing and not to be taken literally.) Your question was asked unscientifically. It did have evidence, but that evidence was very low quality (being based on Google search results). The subsequent edits have not shown substantial support for your position.

Science often requires the "5 sigma" standard, which is a less than 1 in 3.5 million chance for the raw data to have occurred from random fluctuations. While some evidence exists that some native speakers have occasionally uttered "tell advice", there's no evidence that any native speakers use "tell advice" in preference to "give advice" or that "tell advice" is used by any speaker on a frequent enough basis for it to be considered idiomatic. However, the support for "give advice" (which you asked it to be compared to) is undeniable.

"tell advice" could simply be a speaker saying "Let me tell you something advice". At the start of the sentence they planned to say "something" but changed their mind after they had already said "tell". Is that plausible enough to throw doubt on that evidence? Yes. Is it guaranteed to be true? No. More study would be needed to separate accidental use of "tell advice" with intentional use of "tell advice". It can't be proved either that it was intentional or accidental, so we don't know whether we can include that evidence or not. What we do know is that all humans make mistakes, and even the best speaker occasionally says the wrong word.

There is not enough quality evidence to reasonably support the position that "tell advice" is idiomatic.

You say yourself in this Meta question:

Here is what CJ Dennis said in chat, which I complete agree with [...]:

There could arise some population of native English speakers for whom "tell advice" is idiomatic. It could become idiomatic in every English variety. However, it isn't at present and there's no evidence it ever was.

[emphasis added]

You say you completely agree with my statement "['tell advice'] isn't [idiomatic] at present and there's no evidence it ever was." So I don't know why you keep arguing the opposite position.

Your question has been taken seriously by everyone who posted answers, comments, or edited your question. However, you have rejected every reasonable argument against your opinion. A question that only exists to support an unreasonable position is by definition a bad one and deserves downvotes (not you, the OP, just the question itself). Votes let users who have never seen the post before see how valuable other users have judged it to be so they can make a decision whether to read it or not.

I would ask that you don't take this personally. I can tell you're very emotionally invested in this question. Had it been asked from an enquiring position with a mind open to the opposite position, it might have been received more favourably. I would also suggest that you take some time away from English.SE to cool down.

I've had several long (multiple hour) chats with you recently. You seem like a nice person. It's just that on this issue you won't budge. You really need to have an open mind to see the value in the responses you got. You need to be able to judge the evidence objectively, and not from the viewpoint of an assumed conclusion. Refusing to give up a bad assumption is bad science and makes for a bad question. Not all evidence is equally valuable. It can also be very difficult when you are very emotionally invested in the assumption. If you backed down and admitted you were wrong you might feel very foolish, however, I don't think many people (if any) would think less of you for that. I for one would not judge you on that. I would admire you for overcoming your emotions.

The issue is not so much about whether you think X or ¬X is true, it's about whether a random reasonable person with no prior exposure to the question would judge X or ¬X to be true.

I really hope this post has helped you understand the dynamics of voting (that for most users it's based on evidence and presenting a reasonable argument) even though I haven't explained voting that much.

Good luck, and all the best.