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I've had several questions amongst all the website going to Hot Network Questions. But some of those attracted very low quality comments and answers from visitors saying (amongst other things, naturally) "first-time poster" or "saw this from HNQ". On the contrary, they added digressions in other answers where all I wanted was some focus.

What I mean is that one low quality answer has led and can lead experts in a mindset which isn't helpful to the initial question. It has happened to me as an answerer: I thought of the question in light of a low quality answer (I didn't think of that answer as a low quality when I first read it) and I took the time to write an answer, only to re-read the initial question and see that my answer only answered a fringe and irrelevant part of the question. So of course, I noticed before posting and deleted my draft, but not everybody is as diligent.

Sometimes I fear in advance to post a question because it will ineluctably go on HNQ (given the community I posted on) and I can get one or two good answers on it, but 3-4 very low quality ones which will have to be moderated, and I try to change the title to make it less HNQ-able to avoid the big crowd.

I also know that it's kind of the opposite direction of what SO wants: more questions seen by more people, but I believe that people are wise enough to not want a full crowd but rather just the usual crowd of the community, a bit like my experience on stackoverflow.com where only one question out of ~100 got the HNQ treatment.

So is there a way such as a tickbox to remove my question from the HNQ candidates?

Please note that this is a general question I had in mind for a long time, so don't try to link this question to a specific question I've asked on any SO website.

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  • Note that you can also protect questions (or ask for them to be protected through flags/chat) if it's attracting too many low quality answers.
    – TheLethalCarrot
    Commented Jun 29, 2021 at 9:25

1 Answer 1

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There currently isn't a feature to prevent your questions from becoming eligible as a Hot Network Question (HNQ).

However, once your question is selected as a HNQ, site moderators are able to remove the question from the HNQ's, as was announced here: Updating the Hot Network Questions List - now with a bit more network and a little less "hotness"!

If you would like a moderator to perform that action, you can flag the post in question, pick the "other" reason and explain that you would like to see it removed from the HNQ's.

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    This is good advice. Unfortunately, it might not be practical though as mod flags tend to take a lot of time to handle (at least on Stack Overflow). I have a pending flag for 4 weeks now.
    – 41686d6564
    Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 12:08
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    I think SO is more of the exception then the norm @41686d6564, because of its sheer size. If there are urgent matters, you could always try to find a mod on your sites chatserver.
    – Luuklag
    Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 12:16
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    @41686d6564 luckily for Stack Overflow hot questions there is no need to mod flag for their removal, because system is specifically tweaked to push SO questions from hot list much faster than all other sites
    – gnat
    Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 15:48

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