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This question about repulsive black holes has been heavily down-voted. Just in case those reading this might have joined in on this, I'd like to make a pitch for not doing it.

The OP doesn't understand the physics. Of course, if the OP did understand it, the OP wouldn't be posting here. But in this case, there's some pretty serious misunderstanding going on (negative-massed photons??).

Fair enough. In fact, that and some other oddities make it very hard to tell what's being asked, and for this reason the question has been put on hold. Well done!

But why down-vote?

If you're at all charitable as a reader, I think it's clear what the OP is trying to do.

  • I want black holes backwards
  • I have a vague idea how this might work, but don't know much about physics
  • I don't want to write a "please work out my world for me" idea-generation question, because that's not cool on this SE
  • I will make a stab at it, and probably get it wrong

Isn't that pretty much exactly what we'd like this person to do? And then, if all goes well, the ongoing comments will refine the question until it can be reopened and ready for prime-time.

But three down-votes in a very short time, especially when the only apparent criticisms are "this isn't clear" and "you don't know much physics," boils down to a clear message of rejection.

Anyway, that's my WB.SE gripe for the day.

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According to the hover text:

Upvote -- "This question shows research effort; it is useful and clear"

Downvote -- "This question does not show any research effort; it is not useful or unclear"

Downvoting seems to align with the close reason of "Unclear what you're asking." I think you might be finding the heavy downvotes an issue because WB SE has an issue with not downvoting regularly. So, when a post appears that meets the criteria for a downvote, and it gets lots of downvotes, it becomes an anomaly.

Remember, it's not required for people who downvote to leave commentary explaining their reasons. We strongly ask close-voters to leave commentary, and we suggest downvoters do so as well, but there's no enforcement mechanism to require it.

As a side note, notice that the question has significant scientific errors and is tagged with the tag. The discrepancy between "I'm redefining science like this; what happens?" and "answers should be backed up by equations, scientific papers, etc." may have helped drive the downvotes.

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    $\begingroup$ The difference between close votes and downvotes is that if the question doesn't end up closed, no harm done really; and if it does end up closed, then the OP will see the closed message which hopefully at least points them in the right direction for how to fix their question (unless it is grossly off-topic). Downvotes have no similar mechanism. $\endgroup$
    – user
    Mar 28, 2016 at 16:16
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    $\begingroup$ I also agree with the point on [hard-science]; I know that I too tend to judge those questions and answers more harshly, because that is the express intent of that tag: the OP specifically indicates they want something that could potentially pass muster on one of the subject-specific science sites such as Physics, Biology, Space Exploration, Computer Science, etc. $\endgroup$
    – user
    Mar 28, 2016 at 16:17

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