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10:58 AM

@Monica Relevant

Q: How should we respond to persistently low quality question askers?

I saw this question, stewed over it for a while and posted a comment. But I got cold feet and deleted it again. Do you think it was appropriate? You are so representative for SO's Eternal September. I recognize your question style. You've got basically 100 strips of paper with a softwar...

8 hours later…

HodofHod

6:36 PM

@MonicaCellio Here's the main issues as I see it: 1) He asks a lot of questions, some that have an interesting kernel, but that include so much inessential, tangential, and/or irrelevant material as to make them confusing and nigh indecipherable. Those of his questions that have been upvoted usually have a good deal of community input and editing. If he could learn to keep his questions to the essentials (and under 200 words) his questions would be a lot more welcome.

2) He continues to make a lot of (sometimes strange) assumptions in his questions. Instead of just asking why and how, he assumes a certain conclusion, and then asks if and why that conclusion is true. This, in and of itself, wouldn't be a problem, but his tendency is to choose conclusions that would seem obviously bothersome to a religious community. E.g., "Why is the Torah wrong about this genetics issue?" (yes, he includes other possible conclusions in a list, but this is not always the case)

Monica Cellio

@HodofHod yeah, I agree. I need to figure out how to explain it to him, as we can't expect the community to keep editing his posts for him.

HodofHod

There are other smaller problems: a small language barrier, his continuing use of Christian translations when the community has asked him not to, etc.. Those are secondary, I feel. If he can work out the first two, then we can push the others. Without the first two, his questions will continue to be downvoted and closed.

@MonicaCellio Precisely. The only course I can think of is a mod message, asking him to cleanup his current questions, following the above guidelines: keep it to the essentials, and avoid conclusions. We can walk him through one in chat if he needs, I think?

@MonicaCellio I believe he has been suspended at least once before, correct?

A walk through is really last ditch effort, that I'm not even sure should be offered.

Monica Cellio

6:59 PM

@HodofHod yeah, the language barrier is real but it comes with the territory and isn't unique to our site: a global site will have that and we just have to be able to work with people. We should continue to fix translations. But as you said, there are bigger issues to address first.

@HodofHod I believe I'm not allowed to answer that, sorry.

@HodofHod a walk-through is a good idea. Thanks for suggesting it.

HodofHod

@MonicaCellio No problem. I only ask because I wonder if one would do any good. I hope so. Maybe it would encourage him to put more thought, time, and effort into his questions.