What qualifies as a question?

Did your question have a point or was it getting nowhaere?

Which question, @dxs this one or the one I put in social?

I saw your question when first posted, and it didn’t occur to me that your headline wasn’t phrased in the form of a question. When I saw that it had been pulled for editing, I was puzzled.

I suspect whether or not non-questions are pulled for editing depends on who’s actively moderating at the time of the post – if anyone. If you post in off-peak hours, there may not be any mods around to catch it. From what I’ve observed about moderating on Fluther, there is a range of variability in each mods interpretations of the guidelines, and there are times when no moderators are active on the site.

@ccrow The one you put in social.
*nowhere. Don’t know how that happened…Please excuse mæ.

@hearkat Are you saying that questions can get modded by some sort of filter when nobody is around?

@dxs No, I think the details were fine, the message said “There’s not really a question in your question. See if you can reword it so that you’re asking something.”

Haha, fantastic question.
There are loads of examples of this sort where contradiction rears it’s ugly head, who knows why, or cares much either, but it’s certainly out there.

Plus, now that question seems to have gone into editing purgatory… I guess nobody’s looking at it now that I ‘fixed’ it. Now I will never have the opinions of my fellow jellies…. >dramatically throws arm across brow<

@dxs – No. I’m saying that when no mods are online, nothing gets modded; and then when they do login, they have to try to catch up. If there has been a spam attack or other drama going on, some of these grey-area questions might get missed.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a moderator on this or any other site, I am just commenting based on observations over several years – as @ucme says, there are many examples of inconsistent or contradictory interpretations of the guidelines.

Don’t go looking for examples. Just focus on fixing whatever the mods have pointed out.

@marinelife I did. I’m not looking for examples of unfairness(is that a word?) but trying to understand the protocol. How better to do that than looking at what has been allowed?

I answered the question in question (haha).

It was basically written as “Hey, what do you think?” and then a bunch of details.

It would have been better written as “Why does this song about Santa talk about God?” or even “Religious Santa Songs?” even though that’s not really a question.

The “question” part of the question should let the people scrolling through the list have some idea as to what the question is actually about.

Where’s the question in question?

It’s in editing.

Oh.

Not only what is a question, but what is a good question. It seems some questions, can’t say many or a few less people mistaken believe I said all, even though posed as questions, seem far from a valid question, if the idea was to spark thinking above that of redacted. Welcome to the club, I have had questions lost in the peatmod more than once, never to surface again.

@Seek_Kolinahr I tried going back to it to change it again after reading your suggestions but although it says it’s in editing, there’s nowhere for me to edit it.

@dxs Here it is, if you’re interested.

Hey, @ccrow…I wasn’t around when your question was sent to editing, but I can see that it’s back up. That’s why you can’t find it in editing any longer…it was reposted. :)

Just a guess, but I think it might be a combination of what @hearkat says and the ‘flagging’ process. If there was not a moderator on duty when your question posted and it was flagged a time or two, when the moderator logged back in they would (I would) probably kick it back for editing. I think it’s safe to assume that most of the moderated questions are due to flags, rather than the moderators sitting there, bored, trawling for questions to pull.

There is a moderator help link at the bottom of the “pulled” question where you can always ask for clarification from the moderator, at the time, on your specific question rather than posting here for speculation.

Don’t get me wrong, this discussion is great, but if you have genuine confusion at the time it’s best to ask the moderator at the time. I’ve expressed my concerns over having a question pulled and had it re-posted, unedited. If enlightenment is your goal, best go to the source.