When I attempted to ask a question on math.stackechange this message appeared...

You have a history of asking low-quality questions.
To help you do this, the number of questions you may ask per week is currently limited.


This was caused by me making a childish error in evaluating divergent series which received many downvotes. But this was my only offense so why did they not just advise me to be more careful, I am a new contributor after all.

• I think you are completely on the right side. Your question don’t deserve such kind of treatment. – user Oct 5 '19 at 11:27
• Did you have any deleted posts? Although deleted posts do not count for or against your reputation, this is a factor in limiting your rate of making new posts. – hardmath Oct 5 '19 at 12:43
• One possibility for the downvotes in that post may be that people are assuming that you are learning real-analysis or know the definition of infinite series and students who know the concept would/should not make such mistakes. On the other hand, if one has no real analysis/calculus background (do you?), such question, which may be motivated by curiosity, is very natural and legitimate for the site. – Jack Oct 5 '19 at 14:08
• I suspect that many of the downvotes are motivated by the fact that questions about $\sum n$ and $\sum 1$ have been asked about many, many times on this site before (the Numberfile video linked in the question generated a lot of questions, and they still trickle in with some regularity). I suspect that folk are annoyed at seeing this question yet again---this particular question tends to garner a lot of downvotes every time that it is asked. – Xander Henderson Oct 5 '19 at 14:44
• @hardmath I do not have any deleted post, this is my only one (but it was of great error and i apologize for this). – Aops Vol. 2 Oct 5 '19 at 17:35
• @Jack Im only 15 years old (no real analysis background), i watch a Numberphile video using kinda the same method and i thought it'll be cool to play around with it and see what i can "discover". (this is why the whole purpose of the question was to prove me wrong, i wasnt sure) – Aops Vol. 2 Oct 5 '19 at 17:39
• The possible reason Xander mentioned is rather unfortunate for this site: if one downvotes a post merely because one is annoyed by seeing a similar post, that is abuse of downvotes and making this site rather unwelcoming. One should really not expect every user has the same necessary background knowledge and searching ability for a question. Conceptual problems could be asked/motivated in many different ways and yet difficult to be identified as "duplicate" for users who lacks the necessary knowledge. MSE is not a place to kill people's curiosity. – Jack Oct 5 '19 at 17:40
• @XanderHenderson, thanks, im new to the site so I had no idea... No more divergent series for me then... – Aops Vol. 2 Oct 5 '19 at 17:40
• @AopsVol.2: I understand. People here are of very different backgrounds. And that may often lead to the curse of knowledge. Your linked post looks totally fine for me. If you could mention the background info ("I'm only 15 years old (no real analysis background), i watch a Numberphile video using kinda the same method and i thought it'll be cool to play around with it and see what i can "discover". ") when you wrote the post, I think the question may be better received. – Jack Oct 5 '19 at 17:50
• @Jack thank you for the advice. It may be either curiosity or stupidity but I have many "dumb" questions circling maths. I hope i can use this site to answer at least some of them (but not infinite series, never again) :) – Aops Vol. 2 Oct 5 '19 at 17:57
• It was a good question, and while it's true that you could have found the answer by looking sufficiently far in the site, in my opinion the answer was sufficiently buried that you shouldn't feel bad for having missed it. (Not all share my opinion, which is fine, of course.) At any rate, I encourage you to keep asking questions, including about infinite series! – Aaron Montgomery Oct 14 '19 at 19:49

### Research Effort

While it is impossible to know why any individual downvoter chose to downvote, my guess would be that your post received a poor reaction because that particular question (and closely related questions) has been asked many, many times on this site in the past. As per the hovertext on the downvote button, a downvote indicates that the voter does not find the question (or answer) useful, or that the question lacks "research effort":

If a question has been asked multiple times on Math StackExchange (MSE) then asking it again is indicative or suggestive of a lack of research effort. The idea is that a user should spend a good amount of time searching for an answer to their question before they post a new question. Indeed, Jeff Atwood, the creator of StackOverflow, has stated

Passively searching and reading highly ranked Stack Overflow answers as they appear in web search results is arguably the primary goal of Stack Overflow. If Stack Overflow is working like it's supposed to, 98% of programmers should get all the answers they need from reading search result pages and wouldn't need to ask or answer a single question in their entire careers. This is a good thing! Great, even!

Search first. Then search some more. Then spend a little more time searching. If, after doing that, you can't find anything which answers your question, then ask a new question. As you are asking that question, incorporate any information which might have turned up in your search.

To aid in searching, there are a number of tools which may be useful.

1. At the top of every page on MSE, there is a search bar. The StackExchange search engine is imperfect, and it doesn't do a great job of dealing with mathematical notation, but it is a good place to start.

2. You can try approach0, which is a third party search engine for MSE. For example, if you attempt to search $\sum_{n=1}^{\infty} 1$, you will get a lot of results. It takes a little time to separate the wheat from the chaff (i.e. you have to do some reading, as Atwood suggests), but there are numerous relevant posts in that list.

3. There are also a number of other search resources, many of which are outline in this meta post. (Thank you, Arnaud D., for the link).

4. Finally, when you decide to ask a new question, MSE will try to suggest relevant questions. If I try to put the title of the question currently being discussed into a new question, I get the following (among many other results):

As you can see from the scrollbar in the image above, the relevant result is down the list a bit, but it is there. The question highlighted above is not an exact duplicate of what you are asking, but if you read that question, you might find that your question is answered by this post. On the other hand, you might also notice that the question above has been closed as a duplicate of this question. Answers to that question might answer your question. If not, there is still more work to do: on the right hand side of the post, there is a column labeled "Linked":

One of the linked questions there (after clicking on "see more linked questions...") is a question titled "How is $$\zeta(0)=-1/12$$?" That particular question is, in my opinion, an exact duplicate of your question—though the most relevant answers are those attached to the question about the sum of the positive integers.

• Thanks, i'll be sure to do throughout research before all asked questions. My question wasnnt about $1+2+3+...$ it was about $1+1+...$. – Aops Vol. 2 Oct 5 '19 at 18:30
• @AopsVol.2 I have edited my answer to explain why I think that the highlighted question is, actually, very relevant. Again, the point is that you should be spending a significant amount of time reading and searching. You may not find an exact duplicate, but you might be able to get your question answered. – Xander Henderson Oct 5 '19 at 18:48