Sometimes "a" is used with SHAME/PITY/HONOR, sometimes it's not. What's the difference? How to understand when it should be used.
1 Have pity! Please have a pity on the helpless.
2 Shame on you! What a shame!
3 Please show honor to your elders. It is an honor for me to be here.
That's usually not the reason someone votes to close, and when it is, it's usually appropriate. (Questions are closed, after all, when they can't be answered properly on this site, so if someone with 3k can't answer it in a way that's useful to the site there's a decent chance it can't be answered.) In future, please try to avoid assuming the worst of folks who are mostly just trying to do a good job moderating the site.
I don't like assuming the worst of folks but how can I do otherwise when I got an excellent answer hence the question could and can be answered properly.
Well, it's pretty difficult. It requires the humility to realize that (for example) an answer one sees as excellent, others may not see as anything special. (There is one upvote on the answer at present, after 14 hours, and I assume it's yours.) Also, the discernment to tell the difference between someone who is wrong and someone with unsavory motives or who is recklessly incompetent. Finally, the humility to realize how easy it is to come up with plausible-sounding (but wrong) rationales to argue against something that affects you personally.
But if you don't assume good faith of someone when you have as little as a single reason to suppose they are clearly wrong, you're really not assuming good faith at all. It is entirely possible for someone to be wrong for good reasons (or right for bad reasons), and it's important to keep an open mind precisely at the point you are tempted to close it.
I see it much simpler than you do. I am a learner of English. This website is for simple issues related to English. My question is valid. I see no reason to close it. My assuming good faith of someone depends on that particular someone. Those people who didn't even try to answer but decided to close assumed good faith of me? I beg your pardon, but my question is not OFF TOPIC as they state it.
If you can prove that my question is OFF TOPIC then you will prove that your position deserves good faith until then I don't see your comments to be fair.
In other words, you must agree with someone's conclusions to respect their expertise or good intentions. I'm sorry, it does not work that way in any field. No one's opinions are reliable enough for that.
(It's worth clarifying a couple of misconceptions. First, "off topic" does not mean "unrelated to learning English", it means "custom site-specific close reason". Second, I did not vote to close this question, so I am not defending my decision to do so; I am defending a general method and approach that good close voters follow.)
if you expect me to respect your expertise enough to let you single-handedly dictate question appropriateness… well, no, that's obviously not going to happen
That said, arguably the vote for dictionary lookup could be justified as, for example, searching Bing for "pity" immediately shows two noun definitions, one with and one without an article
And fitting those definitions into your two examples for "pity" shows that the one with an article can't fit the meaning.
Hmm. That may well be. In that case the proper thing to do is to look at the definitions you can find and explain as best you can what you were and weren't able to figure out from them. Questions that are edited after closing get a chance to be reopened.
You seem to see the world only through yourself without thinking that others may see it differently. And ESL students may have difficulty understanding simple things.
I know ESL students might have difficulty understanding simple things. But if they can't use a dictionary at all, they clearly can't usefully communicate in English on this website, and so we can't help them...
Through reading dozens of discussions starting from the Area 51 definition days, through years of meta, and lots of commenting, as well as general experience on other SE sites.
But, of course, if I don't own the website all that expertise is so much chopped liver.
I got an excellent answer thanks to the man who answered and to the website. It shouldn't be your concern what this site can or can't do unless you pay for its maintenance.
Discussion between user1425 and Natha…
Discussion between user1425 and Natha…