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Why is there a question limit on Area51?

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1 Answer 1

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Because I was asking too many questions.

Once a given proposal has a hundred questions, few people are going to go through all of them and vote for them. If only a few people are allowed to provide all the example questions, then the site has little "community" input - it's really being defined by a few people.

By only allowing each person to contribute 10 questions, a site needs at least 10 different people with different viewpoints to get a hundred examples.

In short, it prevents a few people from monopolizing the conversation.

Forthermore, the questions are meant to be the defining questions of the site. It's easy to generate a million questions that would definitely be on the site, or definitely be off topic. It's much harder to generate questions that intentionally explore the gray area and force people to really decide what the site is about. By limiting the number of questions people can ask, it is hoped they will choose their questions more wisely*.

This problem is also helped by being able to vote on deleting poor example questions.

*Of course the most efficient method is using a binary search, and each user can, by using their 10 questions effectively, define the site accurately to the 1024th degree.

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So your the culprit! I might have to downvote everything you ever did. :-( –  Arlen Beiler Jun 2 '10 at 3:32
    
Remember to update the faq! –  Arlen Beiler Jun 2 '10 at 3:33
    
@Arlen - Yeah, I've got 147 example questions. The next highest person has 116 questions, and everyone else has under 100. I don't imagine I'm the reason they implemented the limit, but perhaps they weren't expecting to have to institute it so soon during the beta... ;-D –  Adam Davis Jun 2 '10 at 4:34
1  
if it wasn't you it would have been someone else. Rate limits are our friend! –  Jeff Atwood Jun 2 '10 at 5:35
    
Just wait a week @Pollyanna, they'll have votes each day to upvote your great questions ;-) –  Ivo Flipse Jun 2 '10 at 5:40
    
@Ivo - You're just jealous you didn't think of this one first: area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/164/firearms/545#545 –  Adam Davis Jun 2 '10 at 6:16
    
@Pollyanna, I'm not jealous of anything: area51.stackexchange.com/users –  Ivo Flipse Jun 2 '10 at 20:40
    
@Ivo - I hope you realize my pillow is dampened by my bitter, bitter tears each night because of you. –  Adam Davis Jun 3 '10 at 3:38
    
@Pollyanna - sorry to have broken your heart... –  Ivo Flipse Jun 3 '10 at 6:22
    
@Ivo - That's ok, Mr. Skeet. –  Adam Davis Jun 3 '10 at 22:46

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