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After posting various questions (that are similar, but different - during the time frame permitted by the community, with a space of 40min between each), I received the following comments

With 4 questions on the same topic asked by you within 2 hours, maybe chat would be a better alternative, until you can find a single useful question to ask. (Source)

And

It's more than 4. This user is also asking very similar questions on Politics.SE, and I've seen at least two cross-site dupes (one now deleted). (Source)

Is it against the community to post multiple questions, even if they are related but different?

Accordingly to Meta and SE guidelines, I didn't find any opposing this behaviour, but I would appreciate your answers here.

Eventually, due to another user's suggestion, I ended up cross-posting two questions that I shared in Philosophy SE (the second comment points that out, however in a question that I only shared here), on Politics SE (one of which was deleted).

2 Answers 2

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There is nothing wrong with posing multiple related questions on this forum. There however is a certain inadvertent cadre of individuals who in their well intentioned efforts to police content in our knowledge base are quick to find any reason to close a question without any regard for the potential value added to the knowledge base. Some of these users are quite explicit in their motivations, and they are entitled to their votes as any user is, and others are what Slashdot.org were once called anonymous cowards, although apathy is more likely the cause.

This group of users is a good example of how a group of people can be less functionally intelligent than their members combined, a point I raised when I pointed out an extreme case when five users closed a question about a topic that unequivocally has an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I've documented a preexisting recognition of this pattern though my various metaposts. This, dear user, is not a flaw in your questions, but a flaw in the governance mechanism.

Were you to pose the questions in a single Q&A entry, it would have been closed down for not being focused. That you posted across multiple questions is a testament to your intelligence in using this shared resource. However, by posing a series of questions that are similar in appearance likely triggered another heuristic, the "no homework allowed!" objection. This inference isn't unwarranted, but certainly not deductively valid.

This is a case where can and should intersect to the detriment of the knowledge base, and the governing impulse of active voters is geared towards economy rather than quality. Until there is a reformation of governance which redirects the well meaning but unimaginative impulse to close without any real critical thinking, you have to outsmart the collective... impulse.

The primary strategy you can embrace is vary your syntax to foil shallow searches by key words. Just playing with the surface and deep structure will be enough to create the appearance of distance in meaning to confound shallow parsing of the text as a hair-trigger for closure. Secondly, stagger your questions over the course of days or the week instead of back to back. This will defeat the hair-trigger for closure based on the presumption this is some sort of homework or automation or "it's different so it's suspicious" objection. Embracing these two strategies will allow you to do an end run around the lazy thinking that led to your closure in the first place. Lastly, your questions themselves lend themselves to various fair criticisms such as the "opinion objection" as found in the FAQs. I have some tips for improving questions here.

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    In your rage against the unfairness of the world, you seem to have missed that in this case there was neither a downvote nor a close vote involved (so far).
    – tkruse
    Nov 30, 2020 at 0:34
  • Holding up the poorly-phrased questions of a known troll is not great evidence of a cabal of rogue question closers. If there's a flaw in the governance mechanisms, it's that it relies on close voters to deal with network trolls instead of something more effective. Also, stop insulting the intelligence of people whose close votes you disagree with. Dec 1, 2020 at 6:04
  • @tkruse Oh. Philosopher and psychic. I wasn't aware it was possible to impute with such hyperbolic certainty regarding my emotional dispositions. (Rage? did you actually visualize me smashing people over the head with textbooks in your... er... uh... imaginative vision of my destructive verbal paroxysms? lol Rage.) My advice would be don't commit yourself to such an extreme claim with such confidence. They're just "words, words, words". I didn't miss it. The question is a deontological hypothetical, and to attack the historical accident of context is a strawman...
    – J D
    Dec 1, 2020 at 23:58
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    My motivations, since you have misgauged my intent so poorly, is to motivate critical thinking and debate about why this forum fails to live up to its potential, a statement one of the moderators affirmed in his pronouncement of this forum as a cathedral. (As a foss proponent, there's a pejorative force to such a pronouncement.) If I fail so be it. At least I can entertain myself by triggering intellectual pea shooters from the peanut gallery to take pot shots. That wouldn't be you, of course. Your postion on the question is well thought out and quite articulate... wait... where did it go.
    – J D
    Dec 2, 2020 at 0:07
  • @curiousdannii Whoa. Trigger much? How am I supposed to take your criticisms seriously when you voted to close a question on dispositions as off-topic despite the fact it has its own entry in the SEP. here At least we are agreed that is a need in the reformation of governance in the forum. I insult no one who isn't seeking to be insulted, so I find your offense interesting. And attacking the poster is at best ad hominem and has nothing to do with the OP's question.
    – J D
    Dec 2, 2020 at 0:14
  • Just because a question refers to a topic in the SEP doesn't make it a good question, nor does it mean that it must be on-topic. Dec 2, 2020 at 0:19
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    "At least I can entertain myself...". Yes, that seems a much more likely goal of your messages than all those utmost noble intentions you proclaim.
    – tkruse
    Dec 2, 2020 at 0:56
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    @curiousdannii True, but irrelevant as the message in question was a good question that was on-topic.
    – J D
    Dec 2, 2020 at 14:09
  • @tkruse I used the phrase 'inadvertent cadre'. You used the phrase 'cabal'. A cabal is intentional, purposeful, and NOT inadvertent. Therefore you ascribing to my text a meaning that is literally the NEGATION of my statement. You're either here to practice philosphy and logic or you're not. (That's a false dilemma, so no, I don't hold that to be the case, but I am preparing your for...) So, let me just add when choosing to respond, that when you claim it's more likely that I'm here to entertain myself than adhere to a "noble" intention...
    – J D
    Dec 2, 2020 at 14:18
  • it would also be a false dichotomy to insist they are mutually exclusive. I make claims; you make counterclaims; we step back and examine the implication and implicature, and hopefully learn something. That is the essence of the 'dialectic', the heart of the philosophical method, and its flavors range from the eristic which embraces sophistry to the politely didactic which is more concerened with feeling than inference. That I choose to use a variety of techniques is exactly. Take for instance @curiousdannii's response to my argument here...
    – J D
    Dec 2, 2020 at 14:24
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    He claimed closure by rationale of 'off-topic' by voting a question closed. I provided a question that offers an explicit rationale for why the question was on topic. I think it's a good argument, but I offered it looking for a counterargument; and the only response is a reiteration, as if saying it twice makes it true? It only reaffirms my claims more broadly in this forum that problems in the mechanism of governance stifle the quality of exchanges. That's the Wittgensteinian [language-game] we are participating in, and the intent of this forum is metacommunication...
    – J D
    Dec 2, 2020 at 14:35
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    Now, if my reasoning is flawed, I'd encourage either you to open up a meta question to ask a rhetorical question to draw attention or to respond to my poor reasoning, by outlining a counter-argument or answer the questions I have posted on the bad closure of a good question or do neither. But I maintain that one of the operational concerns of this community is using comment fields and manipulating the voting process instead of adhereing to the intent of this Q&A knowledge base to apply subject-matter expertise to improve posting quality and increase traffic.
    – J D
    Dec 2, 2020 at 14:42
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I guess there is no written rule against this as it is an unlikely event, more typically happening with blatantly off-topic spam.

It is also generally good to open separate questions rather than mixing fundamentally different questions in the same post, so there cannot be a general rule to not make multiple posting in a short time.

But when there is a big overlap between questions, that gives the impression that the asker is not writing out of curiosity or a need to know something, but for other purposes, e.g. to advertise a certain opinion and get attention. The motivation for a question is not generally a reason for downvote it closing, good questions can come out of this, but with that motivation, a lack of quality often also occurs.

So I would think it risks creating a false impression when done inadvertently.

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