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The post desriptor as simultaneously an adjective and an adverb, retaining truncated into one-ish. E.g.: "ornate, ornately furnished" ↦ “ornate, -ly furnished” got closed on the basis of being "opinion-based". I have two questions.

  1. What is "opinion-based" about it? The fact that there exists more than one possibly valid answer (which fits the definition more closely of "lacking focus"), or some word choice used therein, something else, or a combination? The former reason is true to some extent for many if not a majority of questions; is this particular Question-post phrased in such a way as to preclude an answer?, or what be the issue?

  2. Less than a few hours after its closure (which occurred just an hour or so after my posting it), my question-asking privilege from English.SE got suspended. Now, I don't know how closely connected the two are, but would someone (ideally, among whom a Mod) mind weighing-in (with any suggestions or elucidation)?

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  • Its score just changed from 0 to -1. Whoopdedoo.
    – 11qq00
    Commented Sep 9, 2021 at 2:59
  • I cannot really understand your question.
    – Lambie
    Commented Sep 18, 2021 at 14:39

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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What is ‘opinion-based’ about your question?

Three members of our community cast individual votes to close your question. As none of them has said anything else in the matter, the close-reason of “Opinion-based” is all we have to go on.

Speaking only for myself, I agree with their collective action to close your question for the close-reason given. Your question was:

How might you give an accolade regarding it?

No deep reading is needed to determine that that question can only draw answers that are mere opinions of personal preference. It is not answerable by facts and citations. It is therefore not a valid question from the point of view of the Stack Exchange question-and-answer model.

Why was your question-asking privilege suspended?

No moderator took any action here.

When the software that powers Stack Exchange determines that a new user is not doing well, it usually first offers guidance for how to improve before it starts imposing rate limits on that user.

Apparently you have managed to run afoul of whatever proprietary metrics it uses for this. These metrics are believed to include asking many questions in a short time that were variously downvoted, closed, or deleted by the members of the community.

Another potential trigger for this may be a form of automated quality analysis, the exact details of which are also unknown. But it may have noticed the many, many spelling mistakes, questionable grammatical constructions, rather long sentences, and the generally unfavorable readability score any mechanical analysis tool will have assigned it. One such tool identifies around 100 issues needing attention in your posting.

I’m afraid that that’s really quite poor.

The title of your post, which is supposed to be a question, is not a question. It is also manifestly incoherent:

desriptor as simultaneously an adjective and an adverb, retaining truncated into one-ish. E.g.: "ornate, ornately furnished" ↦ “ornate, -ly furnished”

You “buried the lede”, as journalists call it: your actual question did not appear until nearly 150 words into your posting, and it was a meandering and bewildering slog to get there. If we use the standard typesetter’s line length of 65 ens, that’s at around the 17th or 18th line.

Many people will have given up reading your post by then.

But for those who did manage to persevere, they find that you have ended your posting with yet another clearly off-topic solicitation of opinions:

What is best way / are the best ways ,to wordsmith ’em?

Those questions are not answerable by facts and citations, so they do not belong on Stack Exchange.

Let me conclude by observing that just as we saw in all this post’s text right from the very beginning in its title, even this last sentence requires a serious copyedit pass before it becomes sufficiently well-formed that it no longer distresses the eyes of our reader community here—and perhaps even those of certain system algorithms about which I have no personal knowledge to speak of.

You’ll just have to write better questions.

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  • If I rephrase the parts you highlighted, would that be sufficient to re-open it?
    – 11qq00
    Commented Sep 9, 2021 at 4:06
  • 1
    A poorly written question can still earn its author dozens of upvotes. I don't think question bans are influenced by someone's grammatical or spelling mistakes. I think it boils down to votes, if the first three to five questions are all downvoted and/or closed it's possible the OP risks being banned from posting new Qs until they are fixed. Besides this is a language site and not all users are native speakers.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Sep 9, 2021 at 5:10
  • 3
    Poorly written questions can still be interesting, clear and relatively brief. Unfortunately the OP's post errs on the rambling side and I agree the title is confusing.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Sep 9, 2021 at 5:20
  • @11qq00 Rewriting the question puts it into a queue for potential re-opening, if the community feels that's right. The MSE link in this answer deals with rate-limiting; if you have actually had the ability to ask removed then it's slightly more serious but you would normally have been warned about it. The system's algorithms are secret [even to moderators]. However, the fix is to improve your existing low-scoring questions. Note that deleting them will mean you can't improve them and won't help.
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Commented Sep 9, 2021 at 7:04
  • 1
    @Andrew Leach ~~How often does improving existing questions actually rectify the situation? As it seems evidently I am in the severe removed- category, without having gotten a warning beforehand. I did however get a message few days ago from English.SE Mod team informing me that Comments are not for extended discussion (even though I hadn't engaged in that) which when I asked them for an elaboration they did not respond. So if my ban came from the Mod team rather than an "automated mechanism", well if that's within their purview then sobethey, but it would be nice to know some truth matter.
    – 11qq00
    Commented Sep 9, 2021 at 7:12
  • 3
    Moderators cannot question- or answer-ban. That's done by the system, as tchrist explained. The actual algorithms involved are secret. "How often are things rectified?" is not easy to answer, because many banned posters simply walk away and don't try; but I do know that such a ban can be (and has been) lifted. Improving your existing questions is the only way — and editing them will bump them so the increased exposure will attract more votes. Be sure they're the right votes! You may want to take a bit of time and re-compose questions off-line rather than piecemeal online.
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Commented Sep 9, 2021 at 7:22
  • 2
    I agree with @Mari-LouA that I’ve seen no indications or evidence to date that grammatical or orthographical quality is automatically assessed or in any way taken into account for the banning mechanisms. Still, I think it’s worthwhile Tom pointing them out in his answer because it will influence voters, which is (as ML says) the core input the ban mechanisms consider. This meta-question itself is a clear example. It doesn’t feel like OP is incapable of legible writing, it feels more like a style he consciously adopts for some inner motivation (to appear smart/ clever? to be a Beat poet?)
    – Dan Bron
    Commented Sep 9, 2021 at 10:57
  • @AndrewLeach When are the moderators on EL&U going to hold a discussion about the recent announcement made on Meta about Stack Overflow? Namely that accepted answers will no longer appear automatically at the top. Answers will be sorted according to their score. SE is asking if any other sites would like to adhere to the initiative. If nobody cares that's fine but at least users should be informed, and be able to support or reject the change.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Sep 11, 2021 at 22:29
  • @mari-lou You may have the wrong idea about what moderators do. Actually I think it should be posted by SE staff since it's their initiative and they must have tools to do multi-site posts. However, if you would like a discussion, please feel free to post a question for the community to consider.
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Commented Sep 11, 2021 at 22:55
  • @AndrewLeach SE staff are not posting anything across the network. They haven't even communicated with their volunteer moderators, or featured the initiative on Meta. In any case, you (plural) were elected by the community, and it's not uncommon for moderators to post on meta inviting feedback and then reporting back to the Community Managers.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Sep 12, 2021 at 1:01
  • As for my writing a question about this issue, I feel intimidated and inadequate for the task. But I've done my bit; I brought it to your attention and I also posted an answer on Meta. Feel free to upvote if you agree with its request.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Sep 12, 2021 at 1:05
  • @11qq00 also point of clarification - you didn't exactly get a message from the mod, in that case, you got an automated notification because that specific mod moved a comment discussion in your question to chat
    – Juliana Karasawa Souza
    Commented Sep 16, 2021 at 6:10
  • I never bother with questions that aren't phrased in readable English but appear to ask about technical questions far beyond the author's current competence. They're impossible to understand and it's clear the author wouldn't understand any answer because they are seriously confused.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 15:16

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