@Galerita Some people just enjoy enforcing rules. Without the "opinions" rule, people would probably post more low quality, poorly researched, answers. To make your question generate better answers, try asking, "Are the milestones that China came up with to go to the moon comparable to those created by the Russians and US space programs during the moon race 50+ years ago? If they are similar, is China reaching their milestones and a similar rate or are they progressing faster or more slowly?"

@phil1008 Thank you. I changed the question earlier. Hopefully satisfyingly the "opinions" rule. Newcomers don't break rules on purpose. There needs to be understanding and grace when enforcing rules. It seems it's up to more experienced members to show that understanding and grace. They, after all, have the social power. And it reflects badly on the site if this doesn't happen. Other StackExchange Rooms have collapsed in on themselves out of a determination to enforce rules.

Yes, I agree with you on this point. I also have observed apparently schadenfreude motivated use of the vote to close/delete privilege on occasion - not good. I think we just have to all pitch in to defend or support imperfect posts and hope that in average the community is welcoming.

@Galerita Having read through the various comments, the only person being a little out of line in terms of code of conduct is you. Downvoting is not hostile. Providing constructive feedback and comments, especially to new folks here, is also definitely not hostile

@Galerita We are going to continue to require minimum standards be met, which is why people provide helpful comments. If however you decide to lash out at helpful folks, or become aggressive or even rude, then that is when steps will be taken.

Being a new person here is not an excuse to be rude or aggressive

@Galerita Statistics on sites' success on SE show the exact opposite. Those that do worst in growth phases are those that didn't enforce site rules.

I would really strongly suggest re-reading the entire tour and help pages, and then look at the difference between highly upvoted questions and those that get downvotes

@phil1008 That is unhelpful to a new member of the community, as it is entirely unfounded in real data.

This site, like many of the more technical SE sites, is rather good at using votes effectively and for the right reasons

@RoryAlsop The comment that started this, "I cannot think of a more textbook 'likely to be answered by opinions rather than facts' question", comes off sounding more gleeful about having found a violation of the sites rules than being constructive. In the past I've seen more constructive comments written to support new users.

As a new user on the path to learning what it takes to make a post that complies with the sites rules, I've had all discussion terminated by "trusted users" or mods who summarily deleted the post ending discussion. I've been on the site a while now and I truly believe that this is an area where we should strive for major reform.

I also don't understand why you insinuated that @Galerita was rude or aggressive. Unless he (or a mod) deleted such comments, I haven't not seen evidence of this. Is that what happened here?

@phil1008 it doesn't sound like anything. I was not gleeful. You provided the sound yourself.

It's easy to read something as having an unkind tone when it's not meant to. I used to take issue with Woody's use of separating usernames to ping with his message using ellipses (these -> ...) because I was used to, particularly in fiction, reading messages beginning with ellipses as having an exasperated tone. But that's not what he was implying, it was only what I was inferring

This situation happens enough that I have a meta answer about it that refers back to previous site discourse on it