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So: Forced mate in 'n' from opening.

Here was a reasonable question from a completely new user with 1 reputation, which just happened to have been anticipated 4 years ago with a completely different phraseology: Is it possible to fully analyse, at least some openings of chess?

No welcome, no sorry, just the silent moderator goes in with the [closed] hammer. And three people vote it down. One of them at least (not sure about the timings of the other two) voted down after the question had been closed. To view it, this person must have close/reopen privilege. It's not some visitor did that: it's some person within our community who fully relishes the enjoyment that can be derived by downvoting someone with 1 reputation.

Chess Stack Exchange is far from being the nastiest Stack Exchange site, but still I find this behaviour disgusting. I've gone beyond a point of expecting the moderators here to behave in a kind way with newcomers, but until the happy day when downvoting is removed completely from Stack Exchange, can we in Chess Stack Exchange at least prevent a closed question from being downvoted further?

EDIT: I should say that on this occasion I completely agree that closing the question is absolutely the right action. My beef is with the cold manner and the downvotes

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  • 4
    I'm a little confused about "To view it, this person must have close/reopen privilege." – to view what? Every user can see the question is closed and what the original is.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 17:53
  • @Glorfindel: can they? I thought I read this somewhere when I was looking around
    – Laska
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 1:20
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    The rules are a bit complicated. Sometimes, you can't see the reason or the persons who voted to close: meta.stackexchange.com/q/339700/295232 You can check things like this by using a private window in your browser (or a different browser) where you'll be logged out.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 6:25
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    What a coincidence it's always the same moderator. Anyway I don't see the moderation system is that bad. If you follow the site rules (that you're strongly adviced to read before posted on several occasions) you question will be accepted, both here and in "the nastiest" site
    – David
    Commented Jul 26, 2020 at 7:58
  • I think the ambience in chess.stackexchange is much better than in other SE sites. In this case OP has responded to my welcome message to say that he did look beforehand to see whether the question was anticipated. The phrasing was very different. I don't object to the closure, I object to the rude way an innocent newcomer was treated. It's just not good enough
    – Laska
    Commented Jul 26, 2020 at 10:21
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    This is a symptom of the actual problem - the "normal" moderation tools don't work well since they are mostly designed to work for SO and the associated users. There is no solution in sight for a SE that is struggling with the right balance between upholding content quality (through moderation) and attracting quality users (in terms of content)
    – prusswan
    Commented Aug 12, 2020 at 10:27
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    I think that we should.
    – user24344
    Commented Sep 18, 2020 at 1:22
  • "...it's some person...who fully relishes the enjoyment that can be derived by downvoting someone with 1 reputation." Citations or evidence needed. I appreciate your post and the intentions behind it...I just found this phrase to be assuming a bit much without proper evidence.
    – SecretAgentMan
    Commented Feb 8, 2022 at 19:17

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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TL;DR: No, we can't.

We can only encourage people not to downvote duplicate questions just because they're duplicate; they can serve as a signpost if people are searching for keywords not mentioned in the original question. More background here: Should we downvote duplicates?

We can upvote the question as a form of compensation, but we really shouldn't be doing that: see Is it reasonable to upvote in order to counter what I think is an unjustified downvote? (This goes both ways: you shouldn't downvote a question because you think its score is too high.)

I don't think we should be sorry for closing a question as a duplicate. In fact, pointing a new user instantly to a couple of decent answers to their question is a Good Thing™. Thanks for leaving a welcoming comment, though.

I've tried to find a feature request on Meta Stack Exchange to prevent downvoting closed questions, but couldn't find it. I'm pretty sure it will be met by negative reactions. There's no way of having this rule only apply to Chess Stack Exchange.

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  • Thanks Glorfindel: should say I have no issue at all with closing this question. It's how it was done that I feel is unsatisfactory. Have updated my Q on this point.
    – Laska
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 1:25

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