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I know people sometimes write unclear questions. I think some of them can never figure out how to make their question clearer. I think for some of them, the only way they're ever going to learn is if somebody makes an attempt to try and guess what they're confused about. Then they might slowly learn from experience how to write a question in a way that will get them the answer they were looking for. Also, sometimes they might resolve their own confusion later and might then answer their own question explaining it and mark it as accepted but that can't be done if it's closed or deleted. Once they do that, that might also give other Stack Exchange users insight on what types of answers tend to solve the author's problem.

Everybody has a limit in how much quickly they can gain knowledge. It may be a good idea to adopt the following point system with points that are distinct from reputation points and are more like money where you can buy something if you have enough. Everyone has a site specific point system for every Stack Exchange website and a network point system. A main site is completely distinct from its meta site for points. Everyone starts with 1 point on each of them. On each website, their number of points for that website goes up by 1 every 30 days until it reaches a maximum of 5 and it goes down by 1 each time they ask a question on that website. Also, each time they ask a question anywhere on the network, the number of points for the network goes down by 1 and it goes up by 1 every 30 days until it reaches a maximum of 5. They can only ask a question on a website when they have at least 1 point for that website and at least 1 point for the network. Investing less time studying one subject doesn't seem to enable you to increase the amount of time you invest in studying a topic you're already investing a lot of time in by much.

This way, people will ask fewer questions for the amount of knowledge they gained and they'll have more of a tendency to all be unique and different. Also, more attention will be drawn to each question on average. As a result of more attention drawn to each question, some people would have so much time to invest in a single question that if they had the right skills, they could figure out how to interpret the question when it's unclear.

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    Closed questions can be reopened when they're edited. Even deleted quesitons can be undeleted, so what?
    – πάντα ῥεῖ
    Commented Aug 22, 2020 at 20:18
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    I think for some of them, the only way they're ever going to learn is if somebody makes an attempt to try and guess what they're confused about. It's clear from your initial statements that there's a deeper misunderstanding here. The ideology people pursue here -- and the idea behind most of the moderation tasks -- is helping people by creating a useful resource. The upside and the downside is it's impersonal, and if a post is not adding any useful info to what's already there, 'helping' the OP, however noble a cause, would be orthogonal to the main goal here.
    – M.A.R.
    Commented Aug 22, 2020 at 22:25
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    Absolutely simple way to abuse it: just use new accounts for each question. Presto, unlimited questions.
    – fbueckert
    Commented Aug 22, 2020 at 23:36
  • I don't see how this question is so bad. It doesn't seem that hard to interpret what I'm saying here. I think other users have trouble breaking their habits of speeding through questions and not sticking around on any one question for so long and that's why it got such a low score. I believe that if there were enough slow critical thinkers with a disciplined mind set each of whom was moving slower from question to question, then a month of attention from 1 person could be more valuable to a question than a day of attention from 30 people. Then this question would probably get a lot of
    – Timothy
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 2:55
  • attention. If in addition to that, some of the moderators adopted the right technique, they would have a collaborative efficient research technique on how to moderate Stack Exchange. Then every question would get incorporated into their technique and get its proper attention through the advanced technique. I don't think I'm going to be able to find it anymore because it got deleted and was so long ago that I can't really remember the question title anymore but I actually asked a question on Academia Stack Exchange about research on an advanced technique referencing the Bertalanffy Centre for
    – Timothy
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 2:59
  • the Study of Systems Science. I believe I have a good idea. If it got combined with so many other problems and efficiently adopted, then more than half of all currently unclear questions, not this one would no longer have the problem of people struggling to interpret it. Sometimes they cannot determine with certainty what the question is and can just make a speculative guess. It's because the very problem addressed in this question hasn't been solved that this question got a poor score.
    – Timothy
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 3:03
  • @Timothy - The reason this suggestion is not well received is due to it not being clear. You don't make it clear the point system you are suggesting would be something other than reputation. What good is a point system, based on the quality of the contributions you provide to the network, if it automatically increased daily?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 10:05
  • @fbueckert that's a good point. Do you mind at all if I add that to my answer?
    – Ollie
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 20:08
  • @Ramhound I'll try and think how to make it clearer. I know it's unclear and it appears to be in idea about automatically gaining more and more reputation points. What's actually slowly increasing is the other type of point that's meant to be spent on asking questions.
    – Timothy
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 23:35
  • @Timothy - Users are already upset about question bans so you want another system that prevents them from asking questions?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 24, 2020 at 1:01
  • It's too late. Changing the question might invalidate an answer. Even how I could have written it before, I have so much trouble figuring out what it should have been. I think I just have my own method of thinking and have a lot of trouble changing my habits to contribute practically completely like everyone else. Fortunately, I'm not taking the huge negative scores and temporary question blocks personally. I've had many of them before and didn't worry very much about it and am more patient to learn very slowly and gruadually. Sometimes, what I'm expected to do maybe really can't be done. If I
    – Timothy
    Commented Sep 20, 2020 at 1:49
  • go a long time continuing to regularly get these blocks some of the time, I think it would be a good idea for others to realize maybe what they're expecting me to do truly is something I cannot do. Although I didn't quite figure out how to, maybe some day, I could ask a question on what information I'm missing on why other people are doing things the way they're doing them if they continue not liking the way I contribute. I know any organized plan has rules that are followed like maybe 95% of the time and not 100% of the time. People might sometimes reconsider in some situations
    – Timothy
    Commented Sep 20, 2020 at 1:52
  • some of those rules. Maybe through a discussion with many people here if it's not too long or chat rooms, a question might get formed collaboratively. It seems like it would have been so impossible for me to guess that this question would be considered so bad. I don't see how it's so unclear that it's that hard to interpret it. I think it's just so hard to organize the Stack Exchange network. I think it is possible to interpret it. A lot of people are just bad at it. Also, if we can get enough users to slow down and invest huge amounts of time into one question at a time, a lot of questions
    – Timothy
    Commented Sep 20, 2020 at 1:54
  • would get somebody doing a really good job of interpreting them.
    – Timothy
    Commented Sep 20, 2020 at 1:58
  • I fixed up my question to make it clearer that the points were distinct from reputation points.
    – Timothy
    Commented Sep 20, 2020 at 2:04

2 Answers 2

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I disagree, on several accounts.

Is it really a good idea to delete questions or close them before they're answered?

It depends on the content of the post. Some questions are better left unanswered.

On each website, their number of points for that website goes up by 1 every 30 days until it reaches a maximum of 5 and it goes down by 1 each time they ask a question on that website.

Um, no. Why would you slash reputation by any amount just for asking a question (unless it's spam or rude etc.)? This would not be a good feature to have.

From your comment concerning the point system:

I wasn't talking about reputation points. I was talking about another kind of point distinct from it no different than the fact that you lose money when you spend it.

No. It is still wrong to cut points of any kind just for asking a question. And if they ran out, you'd have to wait 30 days to get a point back enabling you to ask. Losing money when you spend it - that's more like bounties.

Then they might slowly learn from experience how to write a question in a way that will get them the answer they were looking for.

If they read Help on asking for the site on which they're asking their question, they should be okay. Every new user needs a little guidance.

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  • I wasn't talking about reputation points. I was talking about another kind of point distinct from it no different than the fact that you lose money when you spend it. I kind of have an idea of what reputation is and can see why people might not like losing reputation points because it's like being told they were doing it wrong. I think we could have a better system where nobody is rated and everyone and sources of bias are eliminated by moderators and everyone is taught using a student centered approach.
    – Timothy
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 1:03
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As a relative newbie to Stack Exchange I will say that they Stack Exchange community is...confusing. The user base is often inconsistent on downvoting and deleting posts in my opinion.

I've read the guide of asking and answering a question, but on a few instances people in the comments have criticized my question for being unspecific, too specific, and even claiming that "Stack Overflow is not a tutorial site."

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    ... and even claiming that "Stack Overflow is not a tutorial site." Well, it isn't.
    – πάντα ῥεῖ
    Commented Aug 22, 2020 at 23:57
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    The majority of SO contributors are not teachers. They have no teaching qualifiications, no teaching experience, no teachers union card, no teachers salary or prof tenure. If users wish to be taught, as distinct from learning, they should attend a school/college/Uni where there are actual teachers, TA's and profs.
    – Martin James
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 0:28
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    Put another way, SO is not the schoolroom or tutorial meeting, it is the library.
    – Martin James
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 0:34
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    I kind of like your answer so I upvoted it. I actually probably in the past year formed the opinion that people should not get any external penalizations for writing bad questions and should be educated about why others can't figure out what their question is and then driven by personal motivation to get good answers and ask fewer questions so that more attention will be drawn to the questions they really want to get an answer to. However, for an answer to this question to really answer my question, it has to show good creative research attempts based on this question and clearly explain to
    – Timothy
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 1:13
  • me what they were and why they a certain approach will or won't work. I once heard the idea which was probably just a guideline that at most 1% of your answers should be made community wiki. I'm guessing that when an answer is community wiki, others know not to count on it being accurate. However, they don't have time to check every answer over slowly and carefully and it's better if they can count on the person doing their own work to make sure it's accurate. However, there is no perfection and this is really itself just a suggestion and not an absolute rule. Everybody might want turns to
    – Timothy
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 1:22
  • write poorly researched answers and make them community wiki that they feel they don't know the answer to but want to contribute an idea. So you might want to make about 1% of your own community wiki. However, I think it might be a good idea for you to make this answer community wiki so that you can get a lot of collaboration on it and get more research done.
    – Timothy
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 1:24
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    @Timothy - if a user writes numerous poorly researched answers, and makes those answers community wikis, they can still be answer banned. I would hope any answer that is poorly research is going to receive downvotes.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 10:02
  • @Timothy: Are you talking about making answers community wiki to avoid downvotes affecting the total reputations points?
    – This_is_NOT_a_forum
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 11:50
  • @P.Mort.-forgotClayShirky_q No, because the community knows not to count on community wiki answers being written a good quality answers and will invest time to collaborate and improve them. Maybe it's an answer that needs a lot of research and collaboration and writing it as community wiki gets all that collaboration.
    – Timothy
    Commented Aug 23, 2020 at 15:42

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