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This question was "closed as too localized by cardinal, Benjamin Lim, The Chaz, did, Zev Chonoles" on May 8th. A statement below it said:

"This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet."

None of that makes the least bit of sense at all. To say it applies only to a certain geographic area is lunacy. It's a perfectly reasonable question. And the answer explains why the null distributions of certain p-values in hypothesis tests are what they are.

Why did this happen?

Later edit: Once again I find people saying that a poster is in the habit of posting bad stuff; therefore when the poster posts something good it should be down-voted and closed, and a false statement of why it was closed should be published.

That is wrong.

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    $\begingroup$ -1 for "lunacy" $\endgroup$
    – Michael Greinecker
    Aug 28, 2012 at 18:31
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    $\begingroup$ "To say it applies only to a certain geographic area is lunacy." It may be, but nobody did say or imply that, even if we were to take the closing description seriously. There is a logical disjunction combining three possible descriptions. In particular, "extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet," is vague and subjective enough that the users who voted might have believed it applies. $\endgroup$
    – Jonas Meyer
    Aug 28, 2012 at 19:27
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    $\begingroup$ I am greatly saddened by the behavior exhibited by a handful of folks here, who have closed 6 or 7 of the users questions over a day and a half (April 18), during which two users cast 6 close votes each, and another two cast 4 votes each. Possibly this was organized on the chat forum (where they actively organize so-called "firing squads" to close posts). Surely there were many more constructive options available. Some of these posts should probably be reopened. $\endgroup$
    – Bill Dubuque
    Aug 29, 2012 at 0:26
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    $\begingroup$ I am being subjected to cowardly bullying. Some people are putting on airs and pretending to be offended by the word "lunacy", which I used to describe their offensive sarcasm, while they go out of their way to be boors and bullies. $\endgroup$
    – Michael Hardy
    Aug 29, 2012 at 0:46
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    $\begingroup$ @Bill I think it would be constructive if you would point out the constructive ways to proceed. $\endgroup$
    – Michael Greinecker
    Aug 29, 2012 at 1:36
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    $\begingroup$ @MichaelHardy Who is "subjecting you to cowardly bullying"?! Whose "offensive sarcasm" have you described? Who is "putting on airs and pretending to be offended"? $\endgroup$
    – Michael Greinecker
    Aug 29, 2012 at 1:41
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    $\begingroup$ @Bill: I am greatly saddened that a moderator has taken it upon himself to make such an ill-informed and entirely false comment such as your first one in this thread. In the process, several conscientious, caring, devoted (and high-reputation) users have been needlessly, improperly and incorrectly maligned. If you have some constructive comments to make about the so-called "firing squads" you reference (of which this is the first I have heard of such a thing), please open a meta thread about it. It is off topic here and entirely irrelevant to the rest of your comment. $\endgroup$
    – cardinal
    Aug 29, 2012 at 2:29
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    $\begingroup$ I find it odd how you have difficulty seeing how you (1) reference a particular situation, (2) follow it with a specific accusation (Probably, this was...) and then (3) in your last comment suggest that you were not intimating that those participating in the closure were doing that. It also does not comport with the stance you've taken with others that situations be addressed in the abstract. But, the signal-to-noise ratio is dropping again, so this is all I will say here. $\endgroup$
    – cardinal
    Aug 29, 2012 at 3:23
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    $\begingroup$ @MichaelGreinecker : Pretending to find it offensive that I found it lunacy to say that mathematics applies only in some geographic locales is what I called offensive sarcasm. Some people say they are offended by that; one person above down-voted my question because of it. $\endgroup$
    – Michael Hardy
    Aug 29, 2012 at 3:38
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    $\begingroup$ Bullying or whatever aside, I am still slightly bemused at the reaction to the word "lunacy". It wasn't that narrow a question, was it? Which is the point Michael Hardy was trying to convey... $\endgroup$
    – user1729
    Aug 29, 2012 at 14:26
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    $\begingroup$ I agree with Michael. Obviously this question was closed ad hominem. $\endgroup$
    – user2468
    Aug 29, 2012 at 16:15
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    $\begingroup$ @MichaelGreinecker I used it as an analogy not in the literal sense! My point was that I think the question was deemed low quality just because the OP is M. M. Luna (which is why I used the term ad hominem), but not necessarily because the question is low quality on its own. $\endgroup$
    – user2468
    Aug 29, 2012 at 17:18
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    $\begingroup$ Another important thing is that we should allow those who have behaved badly in the past to change their ways. That means one should not down-vote or delete a good question on the grounds that the poster has posted bad questions earlier. $\endgroup$
    – Michael Hardy
    Aug 29, 2012 at 17:53
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    $\begingroup$ Michael, I totally agree! I have an honest question, though: You are a well-trained statistician and I believe you have good intentions; why have you not spent a few minutes collecting some data here and analyzing it? I think you will find the OP's behavior has not changed appreciably despite many kind, patient attempts from a multitude of users to communicate with him. You will see that the closure of his questions is highly correlated in time with his submission of clusters of new questions. You will also find extremely strong evidence to dispute the claims made in Bill's comments. $\endgroup$
    – cardinal
    Aug 29, 2012 at 18:15
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    $\begingroup$ @MichaelHardy: If it would be helpful, I can try to put together a response that draws on some of my own recollections of what has happened here and some other observations, though it has been several months and my memory is not what it once was. :-) $\endgroup$
    – cardinal
    Aug 29, 2012 at 18:16

1 Answer 1

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Apparently, people were fed up with the behavior of a poster who has been repeatedly told to show own work, tag correctly etc. Two persons in the comments posted a link to this meta-thread. There is no category for closing questions for spamming-with-low-quality-questions-and -ignoring-all-feedback, so the question was closed for a different reason.

One can debate whether that is a valid use of voting to close, but I'm sure one shouldn't take the description as "too localized" literally.

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    $\begingroup$ Would the downvoter care to comment? This seems to be a valid observation based not only on the comments on that question, but also on the comments to this question. Whether the closing of the question is good or bad, I don't see a reason to downvote this answer. $\endgroup$
    – robjohn Mod
    Aug 28, 2012 at 18:46
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    $\begingroup$ You say there is no category for closing questions for spamming with low-quality questions. That makes no sense unless the question I asked about was a low-quality question or was spam. But it was a good question. You seem to say that that if people are fed up with someone for spamming with low-quality questions, then they should down-vote and close good questions that the same person posts. That is wrong. This question I asked about was closed with a stated reason that is absurd, and when I ask why, you say it's because there's no category for spamming with..... $\endgroup$
    – Michael Hardy
    Aug 29, 2012 at 1:29
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    $\begingroup$ .....low-quality questions. But this was neither spam nor a low-quality question. $\endgroup$
    – Michael Hardy
    Aug 29, 2012 at 1:29
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    $\begingroup$ @MichaelHardy Please don't read something into my post which isn't there. It is descriptive, not normative. I'm still undecided what the best way to deal with certain behavior is. But I do think the question was low quality. It showed zero research effort and used the imperative mode. $\endgroup$
    – Michael Greinecker
    Aug 29, 2012 at 1:33
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    $\begingroup$ It is standard practice on MO to close homework questions as "too localized". It does not seem absurd to close particularly bad homework questions here similarly, even if the description is not literally applicable. $\endgroup$
    – Alex Becker
    Aug 29, 2012 at 2:49
  • $\begingroup$ @AlexBecker: Is your point just that this was the best tag to be used? $\endgroup$
    – user1729
    Aug 29, 2012 at 21:16

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