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In the last few days, a user has been asking a lot of questions about Skyrim and Skyrim and Skyrim and so on and so forth.

I know we are a gaming-related question and answer website, but honestly, it's getting ridiculous, and that's not even all the questions he's posted. I've seen questions in the past, with more effort than his, flagged for closure as having little to no effort put into them.

I get that we're a site that accepts all questions, but these are even basic game mechanics (*see: who can I sell books to?), and really, it just seems like we're holding the user's hand throughout their entire playing experience.

Is enough becoming enough? Am I the only one annoyed by this, and considering it basically spam at this point?

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    It's not spam. If you don't like the questions, downvote, or closevote if they are off topic. From the quick look I had I noticed a shitton of downvoted questions, and a couple who were positively voted. So looks like all is well. IIRC there are automatic mechanisms that will result in a question ban if too many bad questions are asked.
    – Arperum
    Dec 21, 2016 at 20:09
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    No effort is no closing reason, that's a downvote reason.
    – Arperum
    Dec 21, 2016 at 20:10
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    @Arperum Alright, perhaps my wording was wrong, rather than closing, the site doesn't exactly appreciate low effort questions. Yes, some of them are voted up, but the majority having no votes or negative votes, and the questions having seemingly no effort done at all, it just seems like spam at this point. Dec 21, 2016 at 20:17
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    Just down vote. The system will take care of it soon enough.
    – Frank
    Dec 21, 2016 at 20:20
  • I know I've answered below but I wanted to address this point separately: "I've seen questions in the past, with more effort than his, flagged for closure as having little to no effort put into them." - If you've seen questions you think are answerable closed as 'unclear', then edit them to be clearer, vote to reopen, and potentially leave a comment explaining why. Original close voters may not have had the same insight into what the OP is asking as you, and hopefully your edit makes it clearer.
    – Robotnik Mod
    Dec 22, 2016 at 0:11
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    Also, just want to step in here to say that a user asking a lot of questions is not a valid reason to downvote their questions. Full stop. You need to judge each question on it's own merits. So yeah if the questions are crap downvote them, but you can't downvote their questions based solely on the fact a user is asking a lot of questions.
    – Wipqozn Mod
    Dec 22, 2016 at 18:50
  • @Wipqozn Right, got it. I've downvoted any new ones that meet the criteria of downvoting, and the ones that are semi-decent I've just left alone. Dec 22, 2016 at 19:16
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    I am the user. I have looked on google. If you see carefully, the answer is NOT something you can get from google easily. For example, why fortify restoration improves enchanting. turns out it's a bug
    – user4951
    Dec 23, 2016 at 4:46

2 Answers 2

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Is enough becoming enough?

No. These questions are technically on-topic, though I would definitely agree with you that they are poor quality (a simple Google search answers some of these, and most of the others can be found with some additional research). However, you need to keep in mind that on SE, there is a strong difference between closing a question and downvoting it. Closing a question implies that the question cannot or should not be answered, because it is too broad, unclear, or simply not something we cover on the site. Downvoting a question implies that the question is poor quality or not helpful to other users. There are questions that have many upvotes that are closed for being off-topic, and there are also questions that are not closed that are heavily downvoted.

If this user continues posting poor quality questions, the system will eventually catch on and question ban him.

Am I the only one annoyed by this?

No, you definitely not. As much as I'd love to smite some of these questions with a close vote, I refrain from doing so because, as I explained above, that would inappropriate. Instead, I have to settle for a mere downvote which, although perhaps less satisfying, allows the system to handle the question correctly.

...considering it basically spam at this point?

It's also technically not spam. It's not advertising anything, it's not a bunch of random letters and symbols whose primary purpose is to suck up bandwidth. They are legitimate questions. In fact, if this user had waited a week between each question, I doubt this would have been brought to meta at all.

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    I'd accept both this an @Robotnik's answers if I could. I guess I didn't see it from the point that if they were weeks apart, it might not annoy me at all or i wouldn't make the connections that I have. I also suppose that I forgot about downvoting, and it's greater functions behind the scenes than just a negative number. I suppose I was also under the assumption that the frequency of questions was basically akin to us holding the user's hand through the game, despite their intentions of the question, but perhaps that's just something I have to get over. Dec 22, 2016 at 0:28
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If you mouseover the downvote button you'll see this tooltip:

Downvote tooltip
This question does not show any research effort, it's unclear or not useful

If you don't think the questions are useful, if you don't think they show research effort, or if you don't understand what they're trying to ask, downvote them. Cumulative community voting is what separates 'bad' questions from 'good' or even 'great' questions.

The other thing you can do, is answer them (the ones that are on-topic & not closed of course). If they're simple questions it's likely that it will also be a relatively simple answer.

Here's the thing: we want Arqade to rank high in people's search results, so if a question is 'simple' but a common one that a lot of people will ask, let's make sure we have an answer for them when they find us.

As to the frequency of questions over time: there is already an automatic 'block' of sorts that kicks in if a user is posting too frequently. The block is temporary and the exact triggers are not known to the public, but I've hit it in the past myself. If you're that worried about a bunch of easy Skyrim questions clogging up your feed, you could temporarily block the tag using the 'Ignore tag' feature (with your preferences set to hide ignored tags).

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