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As I have read here and at meta.SO, user should be allowed at most 50 questions per 30 days and at most 6 questions per 24 hours.

See e.g. here:

But when I ordered the questions of this user from newest to oldest, I counted more than 50 questions in 30 days. Ok, I might have made the mistake when counting. But when I view top askers in caluculus tag, the site tells me that there is an user with 62 questions in last 30 days.

So my question is:

Have the limits on number of questions per month/day changed?

I have looked at recent questions at meta.SO which are tagged rate-limiting and montly-questions-limit, but I found nothing.

P.S.1: I don't think this is a big deal. Unless some users start posting such numbers of questions that it starts to be annoying, I think everything is ok. (Considering the total number of questions asked at this site, 3 questions a day by the same user will go unnoticed.) I am asking mostly because I am curious.

P.S.2: I am aware that we have policy not to name users in discussions on meta. However, I thought this might be an allowable exception - I am not saying that these users did something wrong, I am just giving examples where the software at the site does not work as expected. (Similarly as when we find a bug in mathjax, we usually link to a question where it was found.) Of course, if it is preferable, I will remove the links to users from the post. (You'll have to take my word for the fact that I found such examples.)

P.S.3: I wasn't sure whether I should ask this here or at meta.SO, but I thought I might ask here - since the examples I found are from this site.

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  • $\begingroup$ For the user you linked to, are you sure there are more than 50 questions in 30 days? You should note that the dates are "last edited" dates, not the original ask dates. The "top asker" in the calculus tag, however, I have no answer for. $\endgroup$
    – Willie Wong
    Jul 2, 2012 at 9:36
  • $\begingroup$ @WillieWong This query returns 55 results for the range between 2012-05-23 and 2012-06-21. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jul 2, 2012 at 10:01

2 Answers 2

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Ah! Here may be the answer. I quote:

The 30-day limit was introduced on 29 April 2011, and at the moment of writing it only applies to Stack Overflow, Server Fault and Super User.

(The moment of writing being about 5 months ago.) So it is likely that in fact the 50 question per 30 day limit does not take effect on our site.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for your detective work, Willie. Based on what I've read here at meta, I was probably not the only one under the impression that those limits are universal (for all sites). Only now I've notice that there was a comment on a related question, where t.b. also raised suspicion that the limit does not work here. (Although he wrote about 6 questions per day limit.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jul 2, 2012 at 11:22
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    $\begingroup$ After your answer suggested the possibility that limits are not applied to all sites, it was relatively easy to find a question similar to mine at meta.SO: Is the daily question limit actually being enforced?. Some further related questions at meta.SO: Apply the question limit on all sites and Does the question cap apply over all sites, or does it operate per site?. $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jul 2, 2012 at 11:32
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    $\begingroup$ So, presumably math.SE could ask to have limits imposed here if we wanted to. We seem to have had about 150 questions in 24 hours. $\endgroup$
    – GEdgar
    Jul 2, 2012 at 14:09
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My understanding is that it is routine to merge accounts when a single human user inadvertently creates more user accounts.

It would probably be counterproductive for the software to insist that moderators delete some questions to satisfy the limit before they can merge an account.

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    $\begingroup$ I did not think of that possibility at all. This seems to be the most probable explanation. (Although only mods can confirm whether they have merged some accounts.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Jun 30, 2012 at 17:08
  • $\begingroup$ Huh, that's odd. Henning's explanation, while plausible, does not seem to apply in the few cases I checked. Maybe our overlords can answer this. $\endgroup$
    – Willie Wong
    Jul 2, 2012 at 9:27

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