Unreasonable expectations for questions and pedantic gatekeeping

Question

I recently posted the following question:

is it substitute by or substitute for by

While doing my research on the question, I mistakenly came under the misunderstanding that the passive voice was being used in my example sentences. Due to this misunderstanding, my question was closed immediately. I stripped the question of whatever misunderstanding had led to the pedantic closing of my question, as said misunderstanding was irrelevant to the core of the question anyway.

I think it's totally unreasonable to expect questions to be devoid of misunderstanding. I believe my original question showed a reasonable level of research and articulation, given that the entire purpose of a site such as this is to help find answer to questions that are difficult for learners to articulate or discover information about.

None of the commenters closing my question bothered at all to point me in the direction of how to better articulate my question. One commenter was curt and dismissive even.

This site network struggles to shed its reputation for rudeness and dismissive attitudes. I think the network has made great strides in general, but clearly the english exchange has been left behind.

Answer 1

Generally speaking, a question is expected to have more content than "Which is correct, A or B?"

You did include an example, but didn't include an explanation of what you meant by transforming the sentence, why you were doing that, or what you had previously read or attempted to search for to find an answer, and also why that failed to help you. You also didn't explain that you were specifically confused by the placement of the preposition or why the placement of the preposition was confusing (eg with one example of common usage versus another).

If you feel the linked duplicates don't sufficiently answer your question, you can still edit your question with details about how those questions are lacking the information you need, with specifics about what's missing for you.

Answer 2

I think it's totally unreasonable to expect questions to be devoid of misunderstanding.

People vote on questions as they find them, and if a question is deficient, then people are allowed to CV it. They are under no obligation to wait for you to fix the question. Nevertheless, closure of a question is not fatal; once you edit it, it automatically goes into the reopen queue. That is how the system was designed to work; it does not mean that any users are behaving inappropriately.

None of the commenters closing my question bothered at all to point me in the direction of how to better articulate my question.

While it would certainly be nice if CV'ers pointed you in the right direction, they are not required to do so. They are only required to select close reasons, and those reasons are shown publicly.