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Discussion on: Stack Overflow blocked me from asking questions 😥

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Kasey Speakman • Edited

More info on the error message here. It appears to be an automatic ban, done by an algorithm, and only liftable by that algorithm.

SO basically wants you to pretend you are not asking a question for yourself but for all humanity. (No pressure.) They want your question to be fully developed, spelled correctly, applicable to many people, well searched before asking, etc. And it is biased towards technical questions that have quick technical answers. Such as error messages with direct causes or common technical How Tos. It is not actually about helping you with your specific question.

I guess you could look at it more like a crowd-sourced encyclopedia of technical questions. Submitting a question is like submitting an encyclopedia entry which is not guaranteed acceptance. And too many unaccepted entries gets your account flagged.

However most users including myself expected it to be a place where they can just ask a question or answer a question. And it is highly disappointing for that purpose.

As someone else said, you can ask a technical question here. It is less likely that you will get a response but at least you won't be punished for doing so.