I have a question about my Mathematics Stack Exchange post: Can a residue class $(a \textrm{ mod } n)$ have a negative $n$?
My question is: could someone provide me feedback on why this question was downvoted and further deleted? I read the instructions about how to ask questions when I first created my account and I spent much time writing the question to make sure it would be accepted. I believed I stated everything necessary in the question, but if this was not the case, I would like to know how to improve the question and my experience on this website. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
On an initial analysis after the deletion of the question, I found two possible reasons for the downvote and further deletion of the question. I wrote them below, as well as my rationale for writing the question the way I did:
because I did not state in the question what the following comment suggested: If you are familiar with (quotient) rings and ideals then you should mention that in the question since that greatly affects the type of answers one can give. – Bill Dubuque. I did not state that I do not know about (quotient) rings and ideals initially in the question because I never heard about them before. I could have edited the question with this info, but I did not do it for the same reason. I think it would make sense to edit to the question if I did know about those topics, as that would change the type of answers, as Bill mentions. But otherwise, I think the people answering simply should assume that the person is asking a basic question. I even mentioned in the question that I was learning on my own about residue classes on the Internet, and given the fact that the question and its wording is rather basic, I would say it is fair to assume that I do not have a grasp on such concepts, which seem much more advanced.
the way the question was worded may suggest that not enough effort was done by myself to research or seek other similar questions. However, in my point of view, this is not the case, and even if it was, this would not even be a problem. I googled this question with several different wordings and never found one that answered my question. I also consulted several websites with definitions of residue class and none mentioned anything that could answer my question. When the post was marked as duplicate, similar questions about congruence were linked with answers that do not directly answer my question, which is about residue classes. In fact, my question never talks about congruence, and I provide a standalone definition of residue class without using the term congruence (even if it is implicit in the definition). I also state my reasoning while never mentioning congruence. Even though the two topics are closely related, I would say this question and its wording are a good addition to this website because less knowledgeable people who still are not familiar with the term modulus (of a residue class or congruence) will ask the question this way, especially if they came from Wikipedia. Also, if they ask this question in the same way in Google, the question link might appear to them (as it didn't to me). We are in 2023 and people come to Stack Overflow first before consulting/buying a textbook, and that is fine. In my view, many people use Stack Overflow to ask such basic questions and the world beneficts from these basic questions.
