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Why does the system logic sometimes prevent me from submitting a question?

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  • $\begingroup$ When was the last time you saw this? And was it on the main site, or here on meta? $\endgroup$
    – user642796
    Sep 20, 2015 at 4:04
  • $\begingroup$ 1. Today. 2. Don't remember. $\endgroup$
    – MathAdam
    Sep 20, 2015 at 4:11
  • $\begingroup$ Did you perchance fail a CAPTCHA? (If so, are you a robot?) (I'm not seeing how you would have hit on the asking rate-limit.) $\endgroup$
    – user642796
    Sep 20, 2015 at 4:19
  • $\begingroup$ Maybe I was doing too many edits before I submitted. I'll pay more attention to the circumstances next time it happens. $\endgroup$
    – MathAdam
    Sep 20, 2015 at 4:21

1 Answer 1

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In order to prevent abuse — but also, I imagine, as a nudge — a large number of actions on Stack Exchange sites are "rate limited". The complete list of these rate limits can be found on Meta Stack Exchange:

For asking questions, there are a number of these.

  • Users below 125 rep cannot ask more than one question every 20 minutes.

  • Users are limited to 6 questions per day.

  • Users are limited to 30 questions per month.

  • Users below 10K rep will trigger a CAPTCHA if they ask more than once per 60 seconds.

  • Users above 10K rep will trigger a CAPTCHA if they ask more than once per 30 seconds.

  • Additionally, some users may more severely limited if their previous posts have been poorly received (e.g., downvoted and closed).

The rationale behind these is probably two-fold:

  1. we don't want the occasional spammer to flood the front page with "questions"; and
  2. as part of the ideal of "optimising for pearls", we want users to be asking good, well thought out, researched questions; asking too many questions too quickly can be an indication that the user is not putting enough effort into asking their questions. (By making the ability to ask questions a limited resource it is hoped that user will be more conscientious in its use.)

(For you in particular, I can't see why you would have recently hit any of the asking rate limits.)

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