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I've asked five questions on Stack Overflow, and all of them are in compliance with the FAQ on the question ban.

What was the purpose of my ban? You guys tell me, because I'm clueless. Check my profile. I can't be described by any of the following:

  • users who can't be bothered to form sentences
  • users who don't do the most basic kinds of research themselves
  • users who barely even explain what it is they are trying to do
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    The ban is automatic and the exact algorithm is not disclosed. I've quickly checked your visible questions and they look decent, if not good, perhaps this is a false positive. Are you sharing your IP? – yannis Oct 15 '12 at 17:59
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    7 questions, 2 closed, 2 deleted. 2 raised flags on your questions. Very few (exactly one) upvotes on your questions. I suggest inviting other users to see if your remaining non-deleted questions are worthy of upvotes. – Jeff Atwood Oct 15 '12 at 18:01
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    One of the closures is actually a migration to SU, and a borderline one in my opinion, @JeffAtwood. It's about software installation, yes, but dev tool installation. "How to install the compiler the platform vendor uses, without the rest of the vendor's IDE package?" is a question about tools specific to programmers. – jscs Oct 15 '12 at 18:04
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    @NullUserExceptionอ_อ Only because he used a damn fool link shortner thingy, no one could tell. That's his own fault. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Oct 15 '12 at 18:05
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    @dmckee No, that's how the message is displayed to users, the damn fool link shortner thingy is Stack Exchange's fault. – yannis Oct 15 '12 at 18:06
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    @EricLeroy Jeff gave you an answer, more than half of your questions have been closed and/or deleted (1 closed, 1 migrated, 2 deleted out of 7 total). That's... not good. – yannis Oct 15 '12 at 18:08
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    In fact, I do think your questions are rather poor. For example this one asks multiple questions, is really broad and would come close to closure IMHO. And I would have also voted to close your latest closed question. – Bart Oct 15 '12 at 18:09
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    If you want us to tell you that all is peachy and fine, don't ask for our explanation. We're trying to help here. – Bart Oct 15 '12 at 18:12
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    Meh. This is an individual capable of doing advanced level stuff; I'm going with the benefit of the doubt here and upvoting what I think is useful. For future reference, when asking, just try to conform to the SO Q&A model a bit more: make sure you ask one very specific question per question. That'll probably also get you better responses on the Google maps one. – Pekka Oct 15 '12 at 18:15
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    Unfortunately, this can't be just "fixed". It's an algorithm that is applied to everybody equally. So the only way to get unbanned is to get you back across the threshold. They won't "change" the algorithm for just one person. That said, all you probably need are a few upvotes. – Mysticial Oct 15 '12 at 18:17
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    I'm sorry, but given Jeff's summary (7 questions, 2 closed, 2 deleted, 2 flags) the algorithm does not need to be adjusted. You can argue about the validity of those decisions, but in terms of the automatic ban you have the numbers against you. – Bart Oct 15 '12 at 18:26
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    @EricLeroy If management is in here, past this to your superiors please Fifth comment from the top in this thread is by someone with a diamond next to their name, check out his profile. His user ID is also revealing ;) – yannis Oct 15 '12 at 18:33
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    Oh come on. Don't whine. You've been given some comments on what to address. Spend some energy on improving what you have contributed so far (gaining some upvotes in the process) and you should be just fine. Avoid any further closures and you should never run into this problem again. – Bart Oct 15 '12 at 18:42
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    Based on your very positive and receptive attitude I'm sure you will be greatly missed. – JNK Oct 15 '12 at 18:42
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    @EricLeroy Your basically pulling in sympathy upvotes and yet you're still complaining. – patricksweeney Oct 15 '12 at 18:59
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(Preamble: I'm a community manager at Stack Exchange, so you can consider this a response from the management. :))

As mentioned in the comments, this question asking block is fully automatic. There is no person in this company who can click a button to lift it because there is no such button.

The meta FAQ post describes some of the behaviours that are likely to lead to a block, but they're not intended to be fully comprehensive or a judgement on your programming abilities.

The overall intention of this block is to ask that you work on your existing content before trying to post further. The voting on your content is a measurement of how much the community finds it worthwhile, so if you can improve your existing questions enough to get them up-voted, your ability to post again will be reinstated automatically by the system.

With that said, it looks like this meta post has had its ultimately desired effect and you are no longer blocked from posting questions. I suggest keeping the general tips from the meta post as well as the How to Ask in mind when asking future questions. They should help you write questions that attract attention and upvotes.

Hope this helps.

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  • So no button to lift but you can see how close a user is to get banned or get out of a ban? That's quite useful as well. – Shadow Keeps Social Distance Dec 27 '13 at 0:24
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    @ShadowWizard Moderators and diamonded employees can see who is blocked and whether or not they actually encountered the block if they are. (It's basically an at-post-time check, so it's possible for a user to be blocked from asking or answering and not know it if they haven't attempted to make a post). Moderators don't have access to the exact formula. – Adam Lear♦ Dec 27 '13 at 0:35
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    There is no person in this company who can click a button to lift it because there is no such button. Excuse me? You guys at SE write the software that runs this website. You can do whatever you want with it, including commenting out the whole autoban code. It's your deliberate choice to ban accounts with low score; stop using the old "the computer won't let me do it" excuse. – Federico Poloni Aug 9 '18 at 6:36

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