8

I propose that new users who recently ran into a ban from asking questions anywhere else on the network be shown a warning before asking a question here on Meta Stack Exchange.

A huge portion of those questions are either users asking about their ban (who should ask on their per-site meta instead) or asking their low-quality question here and trying to get an answer here. There's a very small chance of it being a legitimate case where a new user wants to post a question here on Meta Stack Exchange if they're question-banned on any other site in the network. The majority of the time, posts from new, banned users are either blatantly off-topic, off-topic because they're about one specific site, or a duplicate of What can I do when getting "We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account"?.

A warning telling users that they probably shouldn't be posting here would likely reduce the total number of off-topic questions asked here (both blatantly off-topic and site-specific).

An example of such a notice would be:

Wait!

We noticed that you're not currently able to ask questions on [site]. Please read the following information carefully before posting here:

  • If you wish to ask about your ban: Please carefully read our guidance for banned users. If you have a further question that was not answered in that post, please post your question on the per-site meta of the site you're banned on.

  • Please make sure your question is on-topic for this site. This site, Meta Stack Exchange, is not the right place to post a question that you intended to post on a different site because you're banned from that site. If you post your question here, it will be closed as off-topic.

Update: As per gnat's comment, it's possible to tell whether or not a user has attempted to ask a question once a ban is in place. As such, I'm changing this request to something more technically feasible.

Improve this question
28
  • I suspect that question banned users on other sites will often not have the reputation necessary to post on their per-site meta: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153414/…
    – PolyGeo
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 4:38
  • 10
    This would be incredibly difficult if not impossible to implement. Question block status is not recorded on a user's profile anywhere, and cannot be propogated to the network account. It's calculated on the fly when a user attempts to post, which means there's no way to know here if a user is blocked somewhere else without doing a lot of work looking at every site where they're a member.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 4:44
  • 2
    @animuson So then how does the system know, if someone tries to migrate a question to a site where the author is blocked from posting questions, or suspended?
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 5:08
  • 1
    @PolyGeo Even a post-banned user can suggest two approved edits to get past that restriction.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 5:09
  • 2
    @Sonic It doesn't. The system actually attempts to perform the migration, and once it's in the other site's space, when it attempts to connect the user, it instantly rejects the migration if that user is blocked. That's why a "migration rejected" stub appears in the revision history after such an event.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 5:11
  • 2
    @animuson No, it does not..
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 5:14
  • 1
    Interesting that it only locks and unlocks. But the process is still the same. It doesn't know the status on the other site until it's actually trying to create the post on the other site.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 5:16
  • "Even a post-banned user can suggest two approved edits to get past that restriction." but not if they are not engaged enough to learn about that, and I think you are talking about quite new users in your question.
    – PolyGeo
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 5:33
  • 1
    strongly related: Let's help askers who are trying to circumvent question block at Stack Overflow
    – gnat
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 6:08
  • 1
    see also: People get lost and crash into meta - maybe we need roadblocks for their safety
    – gnat
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 6:13
  • 3
    I downvoted, see my answer as to why. This question comes across as being hostile to new users, and I don't think it's a good idea.
    – John Duffield
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 7:29
  • 4
    @JohnDuffield wonder if you have seen how such questions are handled here. Last 10 I've seen ended up with score between -6 and -15 and were closed in a matter of few minutes. I somehow doubt that warning new users that they are in danger of breaking their noses like that is really hostile
    – gnat
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 9:44
  • 1
    while comment from @animuson about "incredible difficulty" is technically correct, it is also very easy to address if you edit the proposal and replace warning criteria of "banned from asking" with very similar but much more practical "who recently bumped into question block". Information about cases when user actually hit the block is kept in the system and is rather easy to obtain, as evidenced eg by answers to this statistics request at SE.SE meta. As a side note you can request similar stats for MSE
    – gnat
    Commented Apr 20, 2018 at 13:16
  • 1
    @ShadowWizard No it's not. It's just calculated whenever a moderator views their profile.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Apr 24, 2018 at 18:54
  • 1
    @SonicWizard We do store the datetime that the user last hit the block. But we still don't propagate that information to a network level that would make it accessible on other sites. But either way, it's already been decided we wouldn't implement this kind of warning.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Apr 24, 2018 at 19:00

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
5

Users are shown a warning before they receive a question ban. If it didn't help then, it won't help here either. Developer time is better invested into something that improves the quality of the content that lasts, not on dealing with rejects.

Improve this answer
2
  • 5
    Developer time is better invested into something that improves the overall quality of content that gets posted here on Meta.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 5:53
  • 2
    Precisely this. Just about anyone hitting a ban has already been swaddled in yards of silky-soft warnings and guidance, which they've probably never read. Giving them more text to read - after first running an expensive cross-site lookup - isn't likely to make one bit of difference.
    – Shog9
    Commented Apr 24, 2018 at 0:22
-9

Warn new users question-banned on other sites before they post here on Meta

Warn them of what?

I propose that new users who are banned from asking questions anywhere else on the network be shown a warning before asking a question here on Meta Stack Exchange.

I really don't like the idea of new users being banned from asking questions. Yesterday there was a question about new users being on the receiving end of close votes, and how it upsets them. I think it's a bad idea for Stack Exchange to permit/foster actions that upset/alienate new users. A warning here will only exacerbate that.

A huge portion of those questions are either users asking about their ban (who should ask on their per-site meta instead) or asking their low-quality question here and trying to get an answer here.

Then maybe there's a huge problem.

There's a very small chance of it being a legitimate case where a new user wants to post a question here on Meta Stack Exchange if they're question-banned on any other site in the network.

That's a sweeping statement. This feels like it's heading towards a global warning everywhere saying new users are not welcome.

A warning telling users that they probably shouldn't be posting here would likely reduce the total number of off-topic questions asked here (both blatantly off-topic and site-specific).

Like bro said, it won't help. It will just make new users who feel aggrieved feel even more aggrieved.

Improve this answer
5
  • 3
    I guess you aren't aware of the massive problem of users posting blatantly off-topic questions (e.g. programming questions) here on MSE. An SE employee said in an answer that half of those posting such questions here are banned on their respective sites.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 7:30
  • @Sonic Wizard : no I'm not. I've looked at the questions, I can't see a massive problem. Can you elaborate on that?
    – John Duffield
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 7:36
  • 8
    @SonicWizard it is not a massive problem. We have enough people around to get rid of it in due time. It might survive for a couple of hours but there are still enough hands/voters available to get it moderated even without staff around. It only becomes a problem if we can't handle it anymore on our own.
    – rene Mod
    Commented Apr 19, 2018 at 7:36
  • I'm afraid you missed the point of this question... some examples on off-topic questions posted on Meta SE: want-to-update-the-digits-phone-with-mobile-no-in-wp-usermeta, cross-compile-paho-mqtt-c-library-for-arm, why-not-work-set-image-resource-on-adapter-class-in-override-method. Despite being deleted, you can see the title slug on the address bar which indicates that these are off-topic and won't be received well on here either.
    – Meta Andrew T.
    Commented Apr 20, 2018 at 7:33
  • @HTTPS : I saw the phone question. I haven't missed the point of this question. What's come out is that it isn't a massive problem. See my conversation with gnat above. But regardless of that, I reiterate my point that it's a bad idea for Stack Exchange to permit/foster actions that upset/alienate new users.
    – John Duffield
    Commented Apr 20, 2018 at 11:44

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .