12
votes
Why is the question about "the name of a small unluxurious restaurant" so attractive?
It made the "Hot Network Questions" list which is shown on the right of many Stack Exchange pages. It's the successor to the "supercollider" which used to appear in the page header.
This will usually ...
Andrew LeachMod
- 101k
10
votes
Accepted
Inappropriate replacement of question?
I have deleted the question and merged the good quality answers into "Be like" usage. This is one of the more complicated moderator actions I have done recently, so my apologies if I didn't ...
nohatMod
- 68.3k
10
votes
Voting abuse - why is a perfectly good question being down-voted?
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”...
- 90.3k
9
votes
Vote to reopen 'gradations of beautiful' question
You say:
It's not asking about people's opinions, whether they like a word or not, they are asking for an objective comparison. Vagueness is not an opinion. It's a factual recognition that things ...
- 151k
9
votes
Closing on-topic questions as duplicates of questions closed as off-topic
Duplicates should point to a question that has at least one good answer that answers the question being closed as a dupe. In my opinion, the quality of the answers of the proposed duplicate are a ...
- 1,352
9
votes
Accepted
Is it really true that those who down / up vote and/or close a question do not have to provide any reason why?
Neither up- nor downvotes require a reason, and this, together with the anonymity of voting, is an important part of the Stack Exchange model. You can find a good number of discussions around this if ...
- 35.1k
8
votes
Is it offensive to use someone's comment as a basis of another question on its own?
Objectively, what you did seems to be above board.
Subjectively, the use of the word "Sadly" in your new question may have been taken to have cast aspersions on the commenter:
Sadly, this comment ...
- 38.4k
8
votes
What is wrong with my question?
Although your idiom request was quite clear, your meta question is of interest regarding ELU questions more generally.
This answer just addresses the issue of adding sample sentences, but the ...
- 38.4k
7
votes
Could anyone please provide me a feedback on my effort to improve my question?
Since relevance is not an issue in the case of your question (it's about the English language and its usage), what remains is to express the essence of your question in such a way that can be answered ...
- 38.4k
7
votes
WD-40 pronunciation question treated badly
It's been reopened and the title has also now been edited to remove the obvious misconception from generalising the particular (which probably contributed to closure).
Andrew LeachMod
- 101k
6
votes
Accepted
What is wrong with my question and how could I have done it better?
All the following points are very good advice, follow these tips and your question should be "safe" and always appreciated.
SWR questions are a very controversial issue on this site. There are ...
6
votes
Is it offensive to use someone's comment as a basis of another question on its own?
Your title here is very misleading.
Of course it is ok to quote a comment or part of an answer.
What is bad about your LL question is the framing. You're disparaging the contents of the quote. You'...
- 70.8k
6
votes
Why was my flag declined, and can we close this question?
I sympathize with your opinion that someone who posts a question ought to be able to provide clarification about what he or she is seeking when asked to do so. But I also sympathize with the original ...
- 161k
6
votes
Why was this question about a single word's pronunciation ("whinge") closed as off-topic?
The What topics can I ask about here? help center page implies, but does not outright state, that simple & basic questions that can be easily answered by looking them up are off topic:
If your ...
- 924
5
votes
Accepted
Why is the question about "the name of a small unluxurious restaurant" so attractive?
On English and ELL.SE, questions like the following are popular:
A simple question
No single answer
Many potential answers
Colloquial answers, or regionally specific ones
The many potential answers ...
- 942
5
votes
Should the following question have a proper answer?
The new question is an exact duplicate of How do I pluralize a name ending in “y”? If you think a more thorough answer is warranted then by all means, write one for the old question. Or if you think ...
- 5,705
5
votes
Why was my question downvoted?
No research was indicated in your question.
You can google your question title for a start. The results are plentiful and include at least four related questions on this very site, as well as other ...
5
votes
Inappropriate replacement of question?
There's two separate issues going on here. One is my edit, the other is the original content.
1. My edit
When I saw this question, my reflex was downvote and close vote, but I decided to edit based on ...
- 7,841
5
votes
Voting abuse - why is a perfectly good question being down-voted?
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 ...
- 5,085
5
votes
Why is the question off-topic?
Close votes happen, even on etymology questions that show research, which are arguably some of the most on-topic questions for this site. That’s nothing new, though in this case I really have no guess ...
LaurelMod
- 65.2k
5
votes
Accepted
Please help me improve my question on 'dishonest mistake' (re the term 'honest mistake')
To improve your question,
arrange your thoughts in a logical order;
make it easy to follow and concise;
do not address individual comments either in comments or identifiably in the question: edit ...
Andrew LeachMod
- 101k
4
votes
Vote to reopen 'gradations of beautiful' question
On the so-called data:
The quality of the 'data' in the first chart is highly dubious. For example, the determinative every is listed as going with uncountable nouns. This, of course, is clearly ...
- 45.1k
3
votes
Vote to reopen 'gradations of beautiful' question
To add to this, it may be that there is no ordinal scale for beauty. To illustrate this, consider a more obvious example: countries.
You can rank countries by many measures to get an ordinal scale, ...
- 7,148
3
votes
Accepted
Why was my question downvoted?
The negative reaction might have been precipitated by any one of three different elements of your question.
Firstly, while I don't see any obvious flaw with the core question about which kind of ...
3
votes
Is it offensive to use someone's comment as a basis of another question on its own?
Clearly the person you quoted was offended, as I take from this quote from this comment:
gaazkam, what you seem to have done there appears very deeply offensive. You need both to rectract it and to ...
- 7,148
3
votes
Accepted
Please help me improve my babel answer?
Your answer has eight up-votes and four down-votes, so it's more controversial than bad. I suspect the controversy stems from your discussion of "babble", since some commenters disagree that it's not ...
- 22.7k
3
votes
On the recently-migrated question "Need help with understanding the sentence"
I definitely would have edited the question to add the comment. It isn't putting words in his mouth because it is something the OP said himself. It doesn't change the meaning of the question.
I think ...
- 80.3k
3
votes
Accepted
Why was this question removed from the HNQ list?
The number of HNQ posts removed by Moderators is trivial, really trivial.
In 365 days it was just six out of a total of 499 questions.
Moderators are trusted to know what they are doing and to make ...
- 90.3k
3
votes
Why was this question removed from the HNQ list?
I think this was a preemptive removal, due to the political nature of the quote.
While a HNQ removal cannot be reversed, I encourage you to voice your opinion on this type of removal here: What should ...
LaurelMod
- 65.2k
3
votes
The "short fuse" question is not opinion based
Reopened! The question itself may be somewhat deceptive: it doesn't look like there's much room to come up with an answer. However, when etymology is seen as a field of ongoing research where ...
LaurelMod
- 65.2k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible