My experience with closed questions

Question

As a high schooler, I understand that the vast majority of users on MSE have attained a higher level of math education than me. I have seen a few high level questions that have been very short, with relatively little context or details, that have been answered and have stayed open. However, most of the questions that I have posted, on high school geometry, have been closed, and are still closed for lack of details. I understand that this not an homework site, and is not meant for basics that can be found in a textbook, but why isn’t the site more open to students in high school? Additionally, answers to some questions cannot be found on other sites, or are in fact regarding the explanations found on other sites or in textbooks, but are important to understanding the concept. Has anyone else had this type of experience?

Answer 1

It's hard to give you concrete feedback, as you have not given us much specifics to work with.

The site is open to all who follow the guidelines here, regardless of their level of schooling. Those guidelines require you to provide context. I don't know to what extent you did what and whether readers judged that it was effective at showing how your question is relevant to others.

More broadly, it is more likely that your question will be received well if it contributes to the Stack Exchange mission. At least for some/many of us, the Stack Exchange mission is to provide a place where people can collaborate to build an archive of knowledge that will be useful to others. It's not primarily our goal to help you or any other single person. Rather, we want to expand knowledge on the Internet. You can contribute to that mission by providing a question that many others are likely to have, that is concrete and answerable, and that others with the same question are likely to be able to find via search.

For instance, asking "what is $230902/9409$?" is unlikely to be well-received, because answering that will only help you and is unlikely to help anyone else in the future. Asking "what is a method I could use to divide two integers?" is a little better, because it's more likely to be relevant to others, but it still might not be well-received, because it's already well-covered by many standard resources (e.g., textbooks, Wikipedia, Khan Academy, etc.), so providing yet another answer is unlikely to add much to the knowledge on the Internet. However, if there was some common confusion in a division algorithm that many others at your level likely encounter, and that is not well explained anywhere on the Internet, and that you can ask in a way that is general and findable by search -- asking about that might be a useful contribution.

Answer 2

In my experience, vaguely stated questions are also likely to be closed. This makes sense, as they're hard to answer, but also is unfortunate because beginners don't have a clear grasp of the details and are the ones who benefit the most from basic conceptual answers. Put another way, if you know exactly the details of what to ask, you probably already have some understanding beyond a beginner.

I implore users here to encourage learning and be lenient on rushing to close questions for the purpose of "tidying the site" or some abstract ideal on "what the site should be". "Closed for lack of detail" is very subjective. A basic geometry question would be closed, but a question on a hard integral with no context would be left open, perhaps based on an annoyance of homework questions.

Answer 3

Addendum added to respond to comments.

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I also have noticed this trend.

Short response: there is no quality control on the actions of MathSE reviewers, who are often affected emotionally because MathSE is inundated with low quality postings, many of which refer to very elementary math.

Sometimes, when there is a low quality posting that is of somewhat advanced math, the MathSE reviewer's emotional reaction will (quite naturally) not be so intensely negative.

My best advice is to ignore the fact that MathSE reviewers are not robots.

From your perspective, your goal should be to get your question answered, regardless of whether it involves a very elementary math problem. So, from your perspective, I suggest that you look for defensive measures, such as those offered in the next paragraph.

For what it's worth, virtually every MathSE posted question that I have seen, that followed this article on MathSE protocol has been upvoted rather than downvoted. I am not necessarily advocating this protocol. Instead, I am merely stating a fact: if you scrupulously follow the linked article, skipping/omitting nothing, you virtually guarantee a positive response.

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$\underline{\text{Addendum}}$

It seems as if the portion of my answer before the Addendum may have been interpreted (perhaps reasonably) in a manner different from my intent. The thrust of my answer was not that MathSE reviewers are too critical of low quality questions involving elementary math, or that the reviewers' actions in this situation are (irrationally) emotionally based.

Instead, the point of this answer was to allege that sometimes, MathSE reviewers are not critical enough of low quality questions that do not involve elementary math. The second point of my answer was to give a speculative psychological explanation of why MathSE reviewers might behave in this manner.

Also, there is the third point, which I will again emphasize. From the viewpoint of the original poster of this meta-question, who (I surmise) wants to get their posted questions answered, the focus should be on what defensive measures to take (i.e. pick your battles).