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I was surprised to find that upon asking a question, I was presented with the following message:

Wait! Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.

I had a look at my history, just to check whether there might be anything there that anyone could be possibly offended by, and of course found nothing. As a regular stackexchange user, and an English teacher, whose questions on other sites are usually very well received, I am left feeling rather confused.

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  • Related question on Meta.SE: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/243137/…
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Nov 20, 2014 at 16:40
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    This is an automatted message: it refers to the fact that 50% of your questions have been closed, without taking account of the fact that this is one of two. Don't be too disheartened, but please do check the help page criteria before posting any more questions.
    – Tim Lymington
    Nov 20, 2014 at 16:40
  • @TimLymington ah, thanks! That is a relief, since I hold SE in very high regard, and I find it an invaluable QA site!
    – martin
    Nov 20, 2014 at 16:43
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    The system is not looking at your text, doing sentiment analysis, and judging it offensive. It's just taking the votes and close votes by people. If too many negative votes and too many closures, you get this message.
    – Mitch
    Nov 20, 2014 at 19:42
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    Just to clarify, it's saying that your questions have been regarded as low-quality by other people, not that they've been regarded as rude or offensive.
    – Andrew Grimm
    Nov 22, 2014 at 7:26
  • @AndrewGrimm thanks for the clarification, though I think you might find thst would be "question" singular, as Andrew Leach noted below.
    – martin
    Nov 22, 2014 at 10:05

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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It is an automated message, as Tim Lymington has commented. In addition to the closed question, there has been an additional question migrated to Meta, which means that it was off-topic on Main. That will also affect your statistics; instead of half being closed, it's two-thirds.

There is a bit more to the message:

Wait! Some of your past questions have not been well-received, and you're in danger of being blocked from asking any more.

For help formulating a clear, useful question, see: How do I ask a good question?

Also, edit your previous questions to improve formatting and clarity.

There is very little which can be done with the migrated question.

The closed question might be more on-topic on Linguistics.SE. However, that question contains the sentence Now, to "incantation" clearly has its roots in magic, which — apart from grammar — I think I'd take issue with: I would say it's the other way round and incantation for magic has its roots in chanted spells. The question also contains an admission "My question, therefore, is ultimately metaphysical." Does that mean it's about English?

I would counsel that these two questions demonstrate the need to be absolutely sure that the question is on-topic for the site. (That's a general point – any site, not just this one.)

The other question currently has no answers, but it's a bit disjointed. While it has no answers to upset, re-write it so that it's clear exactly what you are asking about. Again, make sure it's on-topic: a phrase like "I wondered how likely it would be..." sets alarm-bells ringing because (a) it's not a question; (b) any answer to your wondering is inherently opinion-based.

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  • noted. Not the greatest question, I admit - just thought banning from site might be a little strong!
    – martin
    Nov 20, 2014 at 19:03
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    ?.. will try to pose questions a little more clearly in future
    – martin
    Nov 20, 2014 at 19:05
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    @martin - Yes, the wording is a little strong, but the people who designed the system pictured that warning being given to someone who had asked about a dozen questions, with at least half of them closed. I'm a bit surprised it wasn't coded to wait at least until the third or fourth question. One closed question hardly represents a trend! I might even consider this a bug.
    – J.R.
    Nov 28, 2014 at 0:53
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    @J.R. I also think that looks buggy, especially as the not-closed, not-migrated question got a few upvotes.
    – David Richerby
    Nov 30, 2014 at 21:13

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