Hiya, thanks for the response - I understand "how to ask" and read the "faq" (many times), but still think the poor guy got a drumming he didn't deserve. Sure, he didn't state that he did research, but seriously, the effort required to find a useful answer to his question is ridiculous (I spent nearly an hour finding stuff to back up my post), and that sort of thing is also precisely what this site is for.

Maybe I'm just more conservative with my downvotes, but I don't believe that people should be so liberal with them. Too many people use up- and downvotes as "yeah, makes sense" and "I don't agree with or like this one". If the "egregiously sloppy" criterium doesn't apply, then maybe that part of the downvote doco should be changed.

Anyway, just wanted to get that off my chest as I still feel that especially newcomers should be educated rather than admonished with unexplained downvotes (yes, you did explain after he asked), and especially from more "senior" -- as in experience, not age! ;-) -- site participants. </rant> ;-)

Oh yeah, one more thing - if the criteria for downvoting are as you say, then I'd still argue that there are many more questions where all the poster would've had to do was to google his or her own question that don't receive downvotes. His question was by no means among the worst, give the guy a break, he was desperate enough to find an answer that he offered a bounty of pretty much all he was worth... (ok, really stopping now...)

@aaamos People pronounce by example (what they hear) and by analogy (drawing on their native vocabulary and orthography). There are very few English words beginning “ein” or ending in ”stein”, and none contradict the German pronunciation of Einstein. The minor mutation of /ʃt/ to /st/ in Einstein follows English orthography (“st” = /st/, not /ʃt/). I have absolutely no wish to offend you or the OP by being blunt about this, but for an English expert this does not require an hour’s research.

@aaamos The site is overrun by GR and ESL questions. Good ELU editors are not being too liberal with downvotes. To the contrary: they are not allowed enough daily downvotes and closevotes to deal with the mess. I feel sorry for the moderators, to whom a lot of routine cleanup falls as a consequence.

@aaamos Downvotes are welcome on any post which are not useful to the community of experts. That includes very sloppy questions, but also expressly includes questions which show no research effort or are not useful to an expert. GR and ESL questions are not useful to experts: they actually make the site hard to use.

@aaamos I agree that comments on downvotes and closevotes are helpful to new users, but it may not be realistic to expect us to do that constantly under the circumstances. There is a tool which automatically sends an explanatory comment when we mark a post “recommend deletion” for out-and-out deletion. It would be nice to have that functionality extended to closevotes.

@aaamos This goes back to the site being overrun. A lot of bad questions fall through the cracks. The criteria are being applied inconsistently because of backlog. Please help when you see this happen. Flag posts and use your downvotes. Use your closevotes when you earn the privilege.

Finally, please support the proposed site English Language Learners. If it is successful, it will help this site survive, and it will help the many people who have questions that are too basic for this site.