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For the first time on Stack Overflow, I have encountered the

It does not meet our quality standards.

problem when posting. The only thing I have to change is to add an "is" in my post title from "why php error log truncated in nginx" to "why php error log is truncated in nginx", It took me a while.

The whole experience of fixing this "problem" is frustrating besides the php problem I am trying to fix.

First of all, I understand the reason behind this. However, There is no any explanation of what should the poster do to fix this problem. Why not have a link besides the error message to tell people the common mistakes? I had to google around to find them.

Moreover, there are lots of people who are not native English speakers on Stack Overflow. Missing an "is" or leaving a lower case "i" is very common. Making those people spend 5 or 10 minutes to fix their post because of that is bit extreme.

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  • 12
    Ah, the fresh smell of results.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn Mod
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:15
  • "There is no any explanation of what should the poster do to fix this problem." That's by design.
    – Time Traveling Bobby
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:15
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    That didn't take long.
    – user206222
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:16
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    "Missing a is or leaving a i as lowercase is a very common and make those people spend 5 or 10 minutes to fix their post because of that is bit extreme." ... if 5 to 10 minutes is all it takes to have a better question, I'd take that any day over the minor frustration caused. And you've learned something new. Win-win.
    – Bart
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:16
  • 3
    Well, for starters...the code formatting should not be used for highlighting anything but code and a word after a comma does not start with an uppercase letter.
    – Time Traveling Bobby
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:17
  • Really @lucifer? That's the only thing you found to fix? That just bumped me out of the edit I was working on....
    – Bart
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:19
  • @Bart I have always been trying to write a better question. but sometimes finger slips or whatever. It's hard to find one lowercase i or missing is from longer post. Mistakes happen, you know.
    – perlwle
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:20
  • @Bart, i didnt know you too were editing the same question
    – Lucifer
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:22
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    Please look at my edit to your SO question @perlwle. Not saying that it's a brilliant one but I found a lot of changes to make...
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:24
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    @perlwle Sure, mistakes happen. But if the system then notifies you of them (and given that you seem to be very much aware of how to properly write something in English) you should have no problem correcting those. Learn from it and you'll find that you won't bump into it any more.
    – Bart
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:27
  • @benisuǝqbackwards thanks for the edit. Looks good. I am not proud of my english. However, IMHO One shouldn't be prevent of posting because of that.
    – perlwle
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:31
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    @perlwle I understand that. And frankly, I don't find that a problem. However frustrating it might be to you. The fact that you managed to solve it in spite of all this gives me hope that you'll do fine in the future. As for those who don't bother, I'm not sure we should worry too much. And as for pride in your English skills, given your interaction here, with a bit more care, you should be just fine.
    – Bart
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:37
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    Making those people spend 5 or 10 minutes to fix their post because of that is bit extreme. No, I would say that is entirely appropriate. First, otherwise somebody else just has to do it for you, secondly, a verb is a fairly basic requirement for a sentence and hence helps the people reading that sentence tremendously in their parsing of it. Remember, there are thousands posts out there. Any minute you spend on your own post is saved many times over by your fellow community members.
    – Monolo
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:41
  • 3
    It took me about 20 minutes to figure out why this wasn't being accepted subject: "how to reset a thread pool efficiently" changed to subject: "How to reset a thread pool efficiently" Surely that is a bit harsh? Surely that is why people have edit rights once they've earned it? this is the first time I've been disappointed by this site.
    – pstanton
    Commented Apr 20, 2013 at 21:55
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    You know, English is not the first language for some of the posters on Stack Overflow. I really do "grock" the idea of helping to get better quality questions, but lately SO has taken on a bit of aristocratic flavor, in my opinion. All of the controls, the hyper-sensitive post rejection is beginning to make the site too hard to use. To be honest, lately I've been wandering back to the MSDN forums.
    – JMarsch
    Commented May 8, 2013 at 14:13

3 Answers 3

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Missing a is or leaving a i as lowercase is a very common and make those people spend 5 or 10 minutes to fix their post because of that is bit extreme.

But why? Is it better if someone else spends the time to fix it after they've posted it and moved on?

There are a lot of folks willing to help clean up posts on SO. But there are even more folks asking questions that could use a bit of cleaning up. As this question demonstrates, you're perfectly capable of writing complete sentences, with proper capitalization and such - if you'd done that on the question you were trying to post on Stack Overflow, you'd have saved yourself a bit of trouble... Without creating more work for anyone else.

Think of it like throwing your chewing gum in the trash when you're done with it - when everyone puts in just a tiny bit of extra effort, it makes the whole society a better place.

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  • 8
    This gives me an idea: how about doing it how we do it in Singapore? Ban chewing gum outright, saving everyone the trouble of having chewing gum to throw away in the first place.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn Mod
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:23
  • I very nearly linked to the wikipedia article on that while writing this... Figured it might be a bit too grim.
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:26
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    @BoltClock'saUnicorn In that light, perhaps we could change the message to "Your post smells like a durian"?
    – Bart
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:29
  • Plus fact, people tend to learn from their mistakes.
    – Dafalgor
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:29
  • Must ban keyboards!
    – J. Steen
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:30
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    @Dafalgor: In what world do you live and can I go there, too?
    – Time Traveling Bobby
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:46
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    @J.Steen: Actually, I think banning keyboards would make the matter worse. People would be forced to use onscreen keyboards and voice software...which would result in even worse posts. Banning Routers on the other hand...
    – Time Traveling Bobby
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:48
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    @SulfurizedDemonbobby Ban fingers! Ban vocal chords!
    – J. Steen
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 8:49
  • @Shog9 if it takes 20-30 minutes to figure out what your filter has issues with then it doesn't take 5-10 minutes to fix.
    – pstanton
    Commented May 8, 2013 at 22:39
  • @BoltClock'saUnicorn you mean, banning the use of 'to be' forms and personal pronouns, to get the rid of the problems with using them?
    – Cjxcz Odjcayrwl
    Commented May 21, 2013 at 14:55
  • @Łukasz Lech: Yes. I'm not being serious with that comment by the way; I find it just as absurd as you do.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn Mod
    Commented May 21, 2013 at 14:58
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I've just spent 5 minutes figuring why I was getting that same message.

It was apparently because my title did not start with an upper case, which was on purpose because the first word was a programming keyword that IS all lower case...

It would be much more helpful if the message were more self-explanatory, e.g. "please start your title with an upper case and make sentences" or whatever matches the actual rules.

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  • 1
    Are you sure it is due to not using Upper case? I see lots of questions with lower case
    – Himanshu
    Commented May 8, 2013 at 10:10
  • @hims I changed a few things in the title so it might be something else (a comment above lead me to think it was the issue). But the bottom line is that the title looked fine to me before the changes and without seeing this post, I could have stared at it for a while without knowing why it was being rejected (and I don't think my posts are low quality).
    – assylias
    Commented May 8, 2013 at 10:12
  • @assylias: I doubt a lower case title is enough to trigger the filter on its own. Are you sure there was nothing else wrong with the question?
    – hammar
    Commented May 8, 2013 at 10:16
  • @hammar see this comment: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/176891/…
    – assylias
    Commented May 8, 2013 at 10:18
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    Titles that don't begin with a capital letter are penalized pretty harshly. That alone won't block a post, but in this case the title was also pretty short; sadly, short titles with no caps (or punctuation - even adding a question mark to the end of your original title would've put you past the threshold) are something of a hallmark of low-quality questions. I think the title you ended up with is fine.
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented May 8, 2013 at 19:32
  • @Shog9 fair enough, but if the message could point to the title it would help. I was trying to find problems in the post itself
    – assylias
    Commented May 8, 2013 at 21:21
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    I agree; this area of the UI could use a bit of tweaking.
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented May 8, 2013 at 21:34
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I was getting that same message, because my question was to short.
Just duplicate the question and delete the duplicate right after posting.
(yes this is a very dirty workaround, but they asked for it)

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    Please tell me you are kidding. Pretty please, with unicorns on top?
    – Andrew Barber Mod
    Commented May 21, 2013 at 14:52
  • Please note that Stack Overflow moderators consider this to be an abuse of the system, and it will be punished accordingly. Filling your question with nonsense is not an acceptable way of bypassing the quality filters, and makes it very clear to us that you know what you're doing it not acceptable. I regularly flag these attempts as "rude or abusive", which deals the account who posted them substantial penalties. It is not worth it. Don't do it. Take the extra minute or two to fix your question and elaborate what you're asking. That'll also help get you better answers, faster.
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Jan 14, 2020 at 23:54

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