Bullying as a strategy to force close a question

Question

This question - How to install bully and mdk3 on ubuntu 16.04 - has received at the time this was posted four downvotes as well as three close votes for being unclear, however there is nothing unclear about the question. I saw the train coming after the first close vote and posted a comment to future close voters as well as a screenshot in my answer to the question which has the words "Bully" and "mdk3" in it illustrating the question, but this only aggravated the situation and now it appears that the question has been designated to be closed.

Leaving aside the question of close voting, is it really necessary to railroad a clear question closed by repeatedly downvoting it too? It's not a duplicate of anything. It's not the least bit unclear. Under the circumstances I think the four downvotes that this question received are bogus.

Answer 1

I'm not sure I should be answering this question, but here goes.

I can't comment on why other people downvote, but I sometimes do downvote questions as well as vote to close them if they are unclear.

In my opinion this question was no worse or more unclear than any other question saying nothing but "How can I install foo?" If foo is not in Ubuntu repositories, or widely known among Ubuntu users, then the question is unclear, and should be edited to include information about what the software is.

However, I strongly feel that we should apply our own google-foo before voting to close such questions, or take a look to see if there is an answer that clarifies the question so that we can edit it. I strongly urge everyone: before voting as unclear, please make some efforts to see if you can edit the post to make it clear. As terdon explains extremely well here edits that make a question more clear and more answerable are the best kinds of edit. All users can edit or suggest an edit - that is one of the most valuable ways to improve the site, in my humble opinion.

Terdon also said, I think, in comments here (I think it was here - the comment has been deleted I think), that we should be voting on the post and not the author, edits or editor. I strongly agree that voting should be on the post in its current state (very occasionally context or history stops me from voting as I normally would, for example some outright rudeness by OP has been edited out, but that does not apply here) since, as your effort to explain the value of that post in your own answer implies, the value of questions (and answers) on Ask Ubuntu is for all of us and our visitors and for as long as AU lives; it's not just about one OP and how well or badly they handled their question today.

Answer 2

Excessive downvoting on what appears to be a legitimate question by new users is a bad thing. It's unreasonable to expect a new user to understand why a question that had depth and subtlety was repeatedly downvoted. It would be more appropriate if whoever disapproved of the line of reasoning taken by the author of the question stopped at the first downvote. No one asked for more information from the OP, perhaps because none was needed, the OP was left out of the loop, and was left defenseless to eat his four downvotes until I intervened in Meta and the question got four upvotes after that.

Four downvotes is lot of downvotes for a good question to get, even though now it is reduced to three downvotes, so it should be interesting to read what follows about why I think the original question was a good one. To be fair the original question now has four upvotes and three downvotes, which shows that the issue under discussion has at least two sides. Two sides, not one side.

I'm not sure that it was the intent of the author of the question to post a good question, but that is what he did, even though it was badly written initially. I upvoted the question and here is the explanation for why I upvoted it.

The author wanted to install two Kali linux tools in Ubuntu. There are two alternatives that are available.

1. Automatic - Install the tatoolin script in Ubuntu and install the two packages he wants from the Katoolin interface.

2. Manual - Search for the two packages, install required dependencies for the packages if necessary and install the packages.

Method 1 can be hazardous to the stability of the operating system, so it may be overkill to install Katoolin for the purpose of installing only two packages. However the author of the question may be installing more than just two Kali linux tools, so he should be offered that alternative.

Method 2 can be too difficult for some users, especially if package If you dependencies have to be manually installed too. However the author of the question may have experience in compiling and resolving package dependency issues, so he should be offered that alternative too.

What a person who is trying to force close this question by multiply downvoting it would say without thinking is that this proves that the question is unclear because we should compel the author to state precisely his level of expertise as a user and his future intentions regarding installing other Kali linux tool in Ubuntu. In fact the contrary works just as well for the purpose of all users of Ask Ubuntu who want know about how to install only one or two Kali linux tools without destroying their operating systems.