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I'm aware that if a number of a user's question are deleted or heavily down-voted it could cause a ban, but will simply asking too many duplicates alone get someone question banned?

I'm also aware of the secrecy surrounding the filter:

To avoid bypassing the filter its internal rules are a secret, but it is partly based on downvotes cast by other members of the communities. If the other members of the site consistently give your posts a low ranking, you should try to identify the reason(s) for this.
- What can I do when getting "We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account"?

Hence I'm not asking for specifics, just wondering if duplicates are a part of the equation.

Based of the assumption that duplicates are not apart of the filter, I've suggested that they should be: Give an incentive for finding duplicate questions

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    Nice try, but the equation is kept secret; ergo, any facts that would pertain to the equation (including whether or not duplicates are considered) would also be kept secret. I'll give you a hint, though: don't ask too many duplicate questions.
    – user102937
    Jul 10, 2013 at 20:10
  • @RobertHarvey Just trying to see if I'm suggesting that something should be added when it is already present.
    – apaul
    Jul 10, 2013 at 20:14
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    Is asking a duplicate question (knowing its a duplicate) in a completely different way (that you just spent ages searching) then immediately voting to close your own question as duplicate a positive thing for the community
    – Richard Tingle
    Jul 10, 2013 at 20:15
  • For example I asked this question (not knowing it was a duplicate) meta.stackexchange.com/questions/185591/…, then voted to close my own question as a duplicate but didn't delete it as its a useful pointer to the differently worded main answer. Even if I had known in advance that it was a duplicate it might still have been a useful thing to do (more so on the main sites, but this is the example I have)
    – Richard Tingle
    Jul 10, 2013 at 20:18
  • @RichardTingle I'm more thinking of cases where the majority of a user's questions are dups. It would seem to suggest that they don't bother to search before asking.
    – apaul
    Jul 10, 2013 at 20:22

1 Answer 1

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If many of your questions get downvoted and closed, yes, you will probably end up being question banned.

We do expect users to make an effort before posting - this includes searching the site, as it is likely that a problem you encounter is something that has already been asked about.

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    I understand that questions that are down-voted, closed, and deleted lead to a ban, but many dups are up-voted and it seems that deleting them is discouraged meta.stackexchange.com/questions/32311/do-not-delete-duplicates
    – apaul
    Jul 10, 2013 at 20:35
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    @apaul34208 - Duplicates can have a useful role. That doesn't mean that we encourage them. They are mostly useful as search engine targets which end up pointing to an authoritative answer in the linked duplicates.
    – Oded
    Jul 10, 2013 at 21:01
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    I know that they are discouraged, but if they are not deleted or down-voted are they still counted toward a ban? Its makes for a difficult situation to ask for a feature when all info related to whether or not the feature already exists is kept secret.
    – apaul
    Jul 10, 2013 at 21:06
  • @apaul34208 - You can always put in a feature request based on what you do know, or include caveats regarding the unknowns.
    – Oded
    Jul 10, 2013 at 21:08
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    If a feature request on secret algorithms is posted, it should end up being tagged "status-secret" regardless of what actually happens with it. ;)
    – user213634
    Jul 11, 2013 at 9:01
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    @AndersUP - status-i-could-tell-you-but-would-then-have-to-kill-you
    – Oded
    Jul 11, 2013 at 9:04
  • You guys thought of everything.
    – user213634
    Jul 11, 2013 at 9:08
  • @pacoverflow - you should read that article more carefully.
    – Oded
    Jul 18, 2014 at 20:42
  • Sorry to bother you, @Oded, but just to see if I understood correctly, does this mean that a dupe-closure policy like this one (ie: closing story/movies/game/media identification question as dupes if they are asking about the same content even if the provided identification details are different) can potentially give out free "question ban points" to users that don't really deserve it? I would like to be sure that this may be an issue before pointing it out to the other users there.
    – SPArcheon
    Aug 18, 2016 at 7:12
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    @SPArchaeologist - closures do contribute to q-bans, but they are just one component of the algo. I would say that if someone keeps asking dupes without searching first, they probably deserve the ban.
    – Oded
    Aug 18, 2016 at 9:53
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    @Oded but duplicate is special case of closure since it means "this question is on topic for this site, just has been asked before". So doesn't it deserve to cause less "damage"?
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Aug 18, 2016 at 12:13
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    @Oded - My point was that in the specif situation I was talking about, identification question are begin considered dupes not because the question is identical, but just because the answer is. Basically, asking "What series has a villain with a red laser sabre and a black helmet" is considered a dupe of "What series featured Harrison Ford in the role of a pilot trapped in carbonate" just because the answer for both is "Star Wars". I don't think you can expect anyone to search for a dupe if all he remembers are details that the "original question" doesn't mention at all.
    – SPArcheon
    Aug 19, 2016 at 6:50
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    @SPArchaeologist - that is fair. But still - one such occurrence won't cause someone to get into a q-ban. And following the how to ask guidelines will also ensure that doesn't happen. Don't forget - people now get warnings before a ban occurs - they are told to look out and check their questions.
    – Oded
    Aug 19, 2016 at 8:36

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