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I come to understand that there is some policy regarding users who repeatedly show little effort on their part when asking questions.

My questions

  1. Is it correct? If so, what are the parameters by which a user is measured as showing little effort continuously?

  2. Recently I came across a user that keeps asking very low quality questions: most of them are down voted and close. Yet, this only happens when the users asks questions for a specific tag. For other tags, it seems like he/she makes a nice contribution to SO. It's just this specific topic/tag that the user refuses to learn and improve his/her questions. What can be done? It's annoying to keep getting these low-effort low-quality questions...

EDIT:
I understand that the exact parameters of the banning mechanism are not published for good reasons. I'm not after the secret ingredients, and I believe the system works fine in general.

My question is regarding a particular user that on some topics (tags) exhibits "ban-worthy" behavior (at least to my understanding) while for others he/she is a respectable member of SO community.

  • Can a user be partly banned?
  • Can this user be discouraged from participating in certain tags?
  • Or better still, is there an effective way of helping this user improve his/her behavior and learn more before he asks for all tags?

Update:
After a short period of peaceful quietness, this phenomenon repeats itself.
Any new ideas?

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9
  • Automated process that we keep... secret, so it will not be gamed. See meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/…
    – Oded
    Jun 17, 2013 at 20:29
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    "If so, what are the parameters by which a user is measured as showing little effort continuously?" When all their questions are heavily downvoted. It's not that difficult to spot a problem user.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Jun 17, 2013 at 20:29
  • @BoltClock'saUnicorn - and what can be done in this case, where for some tags the questions are clearly problematic and for others they are good?
    – Shai
    Jun 17, 2013 at 20:31
  • @Shai do you have a particular user/tag in mind?
    – Sam I am says Reinstate Monica
    Jun 17, 2013 at 20:32
  • @SamIam I do, but i feel uncomfortable to expose him/her like that. I would like to know first if there is something that can be done.
    – Shai
    Jun 17, 2013 at 20:33
  • @BoltClock'saUnicorn is there a discrete way of communicating with a moderator to resolve this issue with that specific user?
    – Shai
    Jun 17, 2013 at 20:41
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    @Shai: Yes, it's called a flag.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Jun 17, 2013 at 20:43
  • @BoltClock'saUnicorn - ok, flag it. is there any way I can "follow-up" on that flag and see what is done by moderators?
    – Shai
    Jun 18, 2013 at 5:58
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    @Shai: It depends on what you're flagging about. Things that you can observe for yourself include your flag statistics, posts vanishing after you flagged them, suspended users and so on, but that's up to you to find out. Unless we've declined their flags we don't usually inform users when we follow up on them because moderation is usually kept between us and the users involved only.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Jun 18, 2013 at 6:38

2 Answers 2

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Can a user be partly banned?

No, there is currently no facility to block people from asking in certain tags.

Can this user be discouraged from participating in certain tags?

Communication can achieve a lot. Either do it yourself or flag him for moderator attention.

Or better still, is there an effective way of helping this user improve his/her behavior and learn more before he asks for all tags?

Same as above: communication

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  • As my English (an dmanners) are sub-optimal, it would be very nice if a moderator can assist in communicating with this user. I already flagged him. Thank you very much.
    – Shai
    Jun 18, 2013 at 7:43
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There's a secret algorithm for deciding what gets you a question ban, and it basically determines whether to ban based on some metrics.

  • down-voted questions count against you
  • deleted questions can count against you
  • Other bad things such as flags, and closures probably count against you too.
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  • 1
    It may be relevant that the auto-Q-ban system seems to have been implemented as the automatic version of the manual process that OP is asking about: meta.stackexchange.com/a/60294. Jeff mentions in that question that "a pattern of negligent, irresponsible, failure-to-learn-anything-at-all questions [... is] easily the #1 reason I mete out timed suspensions at this point."
    – jscs
    Jun 17, 2013 at 20:36

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