Question closed despite lack of legitimate complaints

Question

I believe that one (or perhaps several) of the votes toward closing my most recent question constitute an abuse of voting privileges rather than having legitimate issues with the question. Certainly, some were legitimate, as before editing I was asking about several different, albeit related, topics. However, I do not feel that my question being closed after my edit for 'a lack of details or clarity' is valid, and I feel the votes were cast purely due to the fact that I was having an argument with established members in the comments, rather than having a legitimate reason to close.

To summarize, my question simply asks 'how can the ability to produce negative electric charges be used to power a basic circuit?'. I entirely feel that my post is not lacking the detail or clarity required for that question to be answered.

While I don't feel AlexP's vote or complaints to be legitimate (particularly since the vote was only cast after I disagreed with his comment stating my post to be a word salad (he could not point to an example) and that I failed to define the word 'electricity'), the one vote that I feel is a demonstrable abuse of privilege is the one coming from Daron, whose stated reason was 'OP is being antagonistic in comments'. Certainly, I was being antagonistic in the comments, although only in response to the equally antagonistic comments I was receiving. However, I have looked all around the help centre, and I do not see 'OP is being antagonistic' as a legitimate reason to close a question.

In short, I am complaining, I feel my post should be reopened (for it to remain illegitimately closed means it recieves less attention, which means I am less likely to receive answers), and I feel Daron is abusing one of his privileges.

I suppose I would also like to know how to report or deal with VTCs that I feel to be illegitimate or an abuse of voting powers.

Answer 1

You might be misunderstanding this site

I was not one of the close voters, but after reading this post and your question, I think some clarification is in order.

1. There is no such thing as a perfect question.

2. The only person guaranteed to clearly understand any question is the person who wrote it.

3. It is culturally appropriate to use the closure system to enforce the need for you to improve your question, even if only five people in the universe need that clarification. Stack Exchange invites rapid closure because the goal of Stack Exchange is to be a resource for many people seeking help with similar specific problems— and our Stack Exchange Overlords want quality answers. From their perspective, the more detail you, the querent, can provide (by request or by force), the better it is for Stack Exchange.

In other words, complaining that people don't understand a question that's obviously clear to you is, well... it either suggests you haven't seriously read the Tour or the Help Center to understand how Stack Exchange and this Stack work... or it's immature. Rather than arguing with anyone (no matter how much you disagree with any comment or answer), take the time to understand their perspective and use that understanding to improve your question. That's always valuable to everyone, including yourself.

And before I continue, while it's true that occasionally AlexP's rhetoric can be a little rough (look who's talking, I'm not the friendliest person myself), he's also one of the most well informed and intelligent people on this Stack. His opinion is worth considering regardless of how offended you may feel over how he expressed it. While the world isn't full of people as well qualified as AlexP (more's the pity...), it is full of people who will, occasionally or frequently, misunderstand you. Learning to deal with it in a useful manner now will help you greatly in the future. On Stack Exchange, clarity is your responsibility and believing that you're clear is no one's obligation.

Now let's move on to what I think the greatest weakness in your question is. Perhaps it's the cause of the difficulties.

4. You don't understand enough about electricity.

Every point in space-time when compared to any other point in space-time has a potential difference. You're using the special case of an intentional circuit to try and rationalize a question that doesn't make as much sense as you think. Your system already allows for what you're trying to do... you just don't understand enough about the physics of electricity to realize that. Why can I make that statement? Because I'm an electrical engineer with decades of experience. Can I prove I'm right? Yup.

• Lightning is, among other things, the conduction of charged particles (including electrons) to ground. High potential in the atmosphere. Low potential in the mantle. It's a complete circuit. Your magic is only replacing the meteorological conditions that create the initial atmospheric charge.

• Of more practical interest is a common physics experiment where a high voltage generator is set on one side of a room and the professor holds each of two fluorescent tubes by their ends, one in each hand, pointing one toward the generator and the other away from it. They light up. It's the same principle as the lightning. High potential at the power source... circuit path through an air gap, then the lights (and the professor)... then an earth ground through another air gap on the other side. Your magic is only replacing the high energy generator.

In short, if you want a trivial example... light bulbs have two conductors. Your magic is applied to one. The other is simply connected to ground, whether that's something complicated or just a wire stuck into the earth.

If what you were trying to ask is how the magic can be applied to a circuit (e.g., must the mage touch the light bulb or can it be applied through an air gap as explained earlier?), then your question is even worse than I've interpreted. That has almost nothing to do with electricity. You have magic. Decide how it's to happen and move on (in other words, VTC:Too Story-Based).

Unfortunately, your poor understanding of electronics made the question confusing to people who don't have my background, education, and experience. One would hope that people who "don't understand the question" would choose not to answer it... except for human nature... and that's where your obligations as the querent come to bear.

Human nature is to try to help

Regardless the tone, words, whatever of any comment or answer, people are (almost always) just trying to help. It's your job to give them the benefit of any doubt. In this case, you didn't understand the situation well enough to realize you could improve your question and they didn't understand the situation well enough to see past your limitation.

But on Stack Exchange, that's your problem... not theirs. It's why the various reasons for closing questions exist.

To be frank, I've given you enough information in this post to answer your question. If what I've given you doesn't make enough sense, apply yourself to research. To expand on something already mentioned, Stack Exchange's goal is to solve specific problems and not to replace education.

If you insist on the question being reopened, then take a moment to think about what everyone has said to you and actually take the time to work through their concerns then edit your post to address them. (I realize that you've already edited the question at least once.) Thinking through people's concerns and addressing them will actually benefit you! And it puts everyone on better ground to give you the information you need.

If, on the other hand, you again believe that a future question you post needs no improvement (which is always false) and editing it continues to be offensive to you (which is always bad), you'll find your experience here painful. Per the Help Center, edits to questions are encouraged and closing questions is an expected practice to keep less useful answers from appearing via people who think they understand what you're asking.

Answer 2

Contexting the closure reasons

When I voted to close, votes were divided into 3 categories :

• 2 votes for lacking focus,
• 1 vote for lacking details,
• and 1 community-specific closure. I haven't checked the sub-reason, but I guess it's this close vote for antagonizing, given the comment and its formalized structure.

Your question before your clarifying comment was prone to either opinion-based closure ("it's your world, your magic") and lacking details ("what's your goal with this magic?"). I therefore chose lacking details since it would likely lead to a closure reason I could best understand. I know, that's tactical voting, but I strive to always give the best reason on top of a detailed comment whenever possible 😊.

Like I told you, I voted to reopen once I got a bit better understanding of the destination answerers should take. I also gave advices to improve on the clarity. I can't help for the focus though, since I don't really know how it's not focused enough in its current state. Perhaps they're just old closure votes?

About that community-specific closure reason

I’m voting to close this question because the asker is being antagonistic in the comments.

^{The comment indicating an "other" close vote to the question.}

As seen in the help-center, the author being "antagonistic" is not a valid closure-reason. Posts should be reviewed on their content, not their querent. On top of that, we have to recall that comments are not the post, so it's like punching the cat 😿 while the dog's the actual culprit 🐶💩.

In any case, you have other tools at your disposal to punish this kind of behavior, so it's those you have to use. Let's see them so we can better know when and how to use them :

Talk it out

That's... Not technically punishing and not an official tool, but let's be reasonable here. More often than not people act on good will. You don't need to get the law hammer out most of the time. Here are three tips to help in the mediation :

• Be sure you're on the same page : Most arguments come from misunderstandings. Don't let badly defined terms ruin your friendly talk, rephrase them and contextualize before continuing. Read twice, think thrice so you don't miss anything.
• Ask why do they think X then listen, wait for the full answer ⌛. Show you actually care about sharing viewpoints, not that you just want to crush them. You can't really debunk an argument which is incomplete anyway.
• If it's getting really spicy, wait ⏳⌛. You're almost never forced to answer right now. You can wait, so can they! Come back tomorrow, and you'll see that all that mutual muttering was kinda meaningless. If not, you'll have a refreshed viewpoint on the matter.

That way, you'll get happy that it went well. Ok, perhaps not always as well as hoped, but at least you'll know what you disagree on, and you'll still able to appreciate each other for who they are :).

^{Reminder : If the comments are getting too long, don't hesitate to create a chatroom. Comments are notoriously bad at holding discussions. By the way, I throw in a thanks to the moderators who move chats into actual chats 🐶.}

Flag

Flagging is a way of bringing inappropriate content to the attention of the community.

^{On flagging posts}

It's the privilegied official tool, when talking out didn't work as expected. If someone is being really unfriendly, flag the comment as being rude or abusive. A moderator will act as a third-party and will normally judge whether it is indeed going too far or not.

Note that I rarely consider attacking on the arguments a valid form of being rude or abusive, even if I strongly disagree with the expressed opinion. However, attacking the person generally is. This includes notably ad hominem (e.g. : "You're a bunny-lover, of course you'll protect them, and that's why you're wrong all the way!") and ad personam ("you're a bad writer, so you can't be right!") fallacies. When it comes to that, it's just best for everyone to stop entirely.

Answer 3

How to deal with it:

Exactly this. Take it to meta! I see the post has already been voted re-opened by the community, amusingly with no edits in between the close and the reopen (other than "mod moved comments to chat") which just goes to show, the community does not always agree with the community on closing things.

You can find past examples in meta of moderators flat out overruling the community and reopening a closed question too, after a meta complaint drew attention to it. I personally think a number of WB entities play it fast and loose with close votes and it only takes "a few" when you only need 5 votes out of thousands of daily WB readers. It's very much an SE problem, and one that they are aware of and trying to improve.

Why I suspect it happened:

I suspect I'll get downvoted for saying it, but you've run into a classic Worldbuilding SE problem: it's not that your question is bad, off-topic, lacks focus, or anything else. It is indeed a valid worldbuilding question, as you are building a magic system and need help with some of the details.

The problem you have hit is that your question is actually so specialized that the overwhelming majority of people can't answer it. Because it is outside of their knowledge, they downvote it and/or vote-to-close it. "Your question is too hard, I personally don't understand it, therefore VTC."

What they should do is just pass it by. Not every question must be judged personally by each of us. It's okay to read a question, say "well that one is over my head" and move on. It's okay if a question languishes with 0 votes and 0 answers, too. It doesn't make it a bad question. It might just mean no one knows, or it's too complex for a casual passerby to answer on the fly for fun (but perhaps a sufficiently bored specialist will get to it eventually, so no reason to close it). I don't understand how electricity works well enough to answer your question, therefore I just skip it, while still recognizing that it's a valid question. Would that others could do the same!

P.S. I also see one of the people who voted to close it, voted to reopen it, again with no changes in between the close and the open. This, I think, highlights another common SE problem which is "snap firing VTC as the first option" when all they really needed to do was leave a little constructive feedback on how the question could be improved. Clearly they hit that VTC early and one of your edits addressed it but too late! The vote was cast, the close happened. In my (apparently unpopular) opinion, VTC is meant for clear violations and questions that are almost certainly unredeemable.

If a few relatively minor tweaks turns a VTC into a VTRO then the VTC was poorly justified to begin with. It should have been a comment.

What we can do about it:

Keep encouraging meta usage in general. This meta post was made 2 days ago, has less than 100 views, and to be honest I only found it because I accidentally hit my meta bookmark when I meant to go to WB. (I do try to check in often though!) We have a hard time reaching a quorum on site policies because you can't have a quorum when it's pretty much the same, like, 5-10 people commenting on everything. People here try to justify their stance based on a comment from 3 years ago with 2 upvotes. I dunno how to improve meta usage (another general SE problem) but I'd love to see policy decisions guided on 30+ upvotes instead of 0-2.