Why am I threatened with being blocked?

Question

I have withdrawn my present question in the face of the flag that has appeared at the top of my screen which warns me that my previous questions "have not been well received." That has hurt me beyond common sense. I have reviewed my previous questions but can't pin down where it was I tripped up. Nevertheless I have made some edits and I hope that will make the difference. I have also re-read the rules for posting and yet still cannot see what justifies this flag. Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me as I have no wish to offend anyone. This is far too useful a forum to risk being ostracised from it. I was hoping I could contribute at some point. What phrases or questions in particular have offended you? Sincerely, Berry G

Answer 1

You have a couple of automatically deleted questions that each caught a downvote. You also had a couple of deleted answers, one with a downvote. I'm not able to give you a reason (that's between those voters and their gods).

Anyway, when you have a low number of posts, and low reputation, the system sees you as a potential problem and to save the community effort cleaning up after a trouble-maker, it starts to cut off access to certain tools.

To fix this, the company line is you should improve these questions, but obviously now they're gone, there's nothing really to be done there. I might suggest grinding the review queues a bit. Editing new posts to improve grammar, layout, etc. Answering questions. I'm not party to how "the algorithm" here actually works so this may only help your reputation and not your question quality issues.

I honestly don't see that you're doing anything that warrants post bans. Worst part of this is mods cannot do a thing about this other than advise. I've made requests to be able to intervene before. Moderator override on automated bans

Answer 2

I looked at the two deleted answers on the dual boot issues question and I was confused as to why you would respond to your own question like that - in one case complaining (fairly abruptly) that the question was off topic!

But I think I understand it - you were attempting to apologise for your off topic question. Unfortunately you made a few mistakes about how the site worked and caused some misunderstandings.

1. You used answers where you should have used comments. You should be able to comment on your own question even with low reputation, but if not, answers must only be used for answering the actual question, and never for commentary on the question. This is fairly well moderated and so that would have led to them being deleted.

2. When you wrote your answer apologising for being off topic it came across as if you were rudely complaining about the question being off topic. Only upon closer inspection was it clear to me that you were answering your own question, not someone else's, and it was therefore intended as an apology. Regardless of this, it wasn't suitable as an answer as it was commentary on the question and didn't answer the question.

As others have said, unfortunately you had very few answers and questions at the time so even though this was a small number of deleted answers it still formed a high percentage of your total answers and questions and it triggered the system.

You can't do anything about those deleted answers, as they should not be answers anyway - so campaigning to get them undeleted will be fruitless. I am sorry that I don't recall a way to find your deleted questions, so I don't know if undeleting them would be appropriate.

Nonetheless, if I understand correctly you are not banned yet, and can still ask and answer questions. The way to raise your reputation is basically asking good questions and giving good answers. Make sure you do not place non-answers as answers.

It's ok to have some deleted answers and questions, and I'm sure I have a bunch, the only issue in this case was that you had few answers and questions in total.