It seems like every 4 hours or so, we get a question along the lines of:
"Why cannot I ask the question?"
"Banned from question asking, plz fix!"
"Modrater plz unban me I need to ask! Plz fix asap!"
etc...
etc...
etc...
etc...
etc...
...ad nausem... (do not click if you value your sanity...)
To prevent homicidal rampages or other undue stress on the rest of the community that is capable both of clicking on a link and reading the contents of it, is it feasible to add some heuristics similar to the question quality checks now in place to prevent them from reaching our delicate eyes?
I'm thinking something along the lines of a two-tiered approach:
Exact matches would be blocked from even posting the question, and redirected to the canonical FAQ post about question bans. This would include matches on things like the redirect url, and some phrases from the error message. If it's technically possible, we could also check to see if they are question banned on SO. We should also probably punch these folks through the innertubes if possible.
Close matches would be redirected but still allowed to post their question after reading another page of material. Maybe add one of the old-school copy protection style questions to make sure they at least looked at it ("What is the third word in the second line of paragraph two?"). These questions would automatically be marked as a possible duplicate. Close matches would include certain word combinations like "can't ask" or "not accepted" or whatever.
I think this issue will only continue to get worse, and at this point it's so frequent that we normally don't even comment to instruct the person, just redirect them.
To summarize -
ANY effort spent on most of these people is entirely wasted.
I know that sounds harsh, but there is a link in the message that redirects them to the canonical question and answer. If they are unable to click the link and/or unable to read the very detailed existing answer that explains the situation at great depth, we probably don't need them! They have already wasted loads of people's time on the main site by asking terrible questions or deleting lots of questions, and then they come to meta and waste even MORE time because they are too lazy to click a frigging link.