I get a message:
Sorry, you are only allowed to ask 50 questions in a 30 day period
Why is there a question limit? 50/month is just not enough :)
7 Answers
50/month is just not enough
Actually... 50/month is kinda insane. There are other people trying to use these websites too ya know.
You tend to ask a lot of fairly brief questions. Some of them are pretty good. Some of them are terrible. Some of them have already been asked. And some of them you end up deleting, for reasons I can only guess at.
They all draw time and attention from other users.
That's time that could be spent helping someone else, perhaps even someone who has spent more than a couple minutes thinking about their problem (or searching...) before asking.
SO isn't your personal concierge, and being allowed to ask 50 questions in a month's time is quite generous - but if it is too restrictive for you then I humbly suggest that you are not granting sufficient value to the time and effort put in by others in answering/reviewing these questions. Spend a bit of time searching existing questions (or, y'know, official documentation) first, and ask only when this has proved fruitless.
Who knows? Scarcity just might increase value!
answered Apr 29, 2011 at 15:04
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63+1 Gasp! There's something called official documentation?! Commented May 1, 2011 at 9:08
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@Jeff lol, seems like now I'm having the same problem as the OP... Commented Jun 26, 2011 at 3:23
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150 questios is not enough. Other sites dont have those limits, this is only one, unfortunately I would say its the best because answers are posted faster than experts-exchange and other forum sites also. There should be no limit to 50 questions, only give a warning to the user if questions quality (REVIEWING EACH ONE) is really bad. If a question has no votes, it does not mean its a bad question. Commented Oct 20, 2011 at 9:20
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15@Luis I am incapable of believing that someone could ask 50 high-quality questions per month. If they knew enough about what they were talking about in order to do so, they wouldn't need to ask so many questions! And even great questions are a drain on other users, as Shog says.– user154510Commented Jan 23, 2012 at 21:54
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So although it says
per 30 days, the limit resets at the end of the month? Or do you get like 2 questions to ask the next day, assuming that you asked 2 questions 31 days ago?– hobbes3Commented Apr 13, 2012 at 18:52 -
I'm hoping it's the latter, since I got this error, but I only asked 19 questions so far for this month (April) on SO...– hobbes3Commented Apr 13, 2012 at 18:55
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6It's a sliding window, @hobbes, if that's what you're asking. If I asked 48 questions in the last 30 days, I can ask two today.– Shog9Commented Apr 13, 2012 at 19:13
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2"some of them you end up deleting". Does this mean that the actual number of questions is considerably higher than 1839?– TRiGCommented Apr 11, 2013 at 14:49
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It's higher, @TRiG - I won't say by how much. Most folks have at least a few deleted questions floating around.– Shog9Commented Apr 11, 2013 at 15:39
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1I have not hit 50 questions in a month yet, but I think the limit is pointless. People will just open fake accounts and not care about formatting or editing their questions because they won't care about their reputation points on fake accounts. Plus they will put dumb questions up. Just my2cents Commented Jan 19, 2014 at 16:49
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2It's not as easy to work around as you suspect, @Michael. Sure, it's possible with a bit of effort - but so is asking fewer questions. Combined with other systems, it does its job.– Shog9Commented Jan 19, 2014 at 17:04
If you are asking over 2 questions per day, there is a good chance you aren't putting enough time into your questions.
This can cause them to be of lower quality and collect downvotes.
If you have lots of questions with low score, your account can become blocked from asking more questions.
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1i disagree, writing out 2 questions isn't that hard....trust me :)– BlankmanCommented Apr 29, 2011 at 14:13
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3It's just going to make some people register more than 1 account.– BlankmanCommented Apr 29, 2011 at 14:14
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16@Blank, the issue is not the time it takes to write a question. The issue is with the research that goes into a question.– jjnguyCommented Apr 29, 2011 at 14:18
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1@jjnguy If you review his last 100 questions you'll see most are upvoted, and none are downvoted. Further, another completely different system takes care of low quality posts. This may be part of the same system, but I don't think that large quantity always equates to low quality, although this limit suggests that Stack Exchange does believe that to be true... Commented Apr 29, 2011 at 14:26
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2@Blankman If you register another account for the purposes of getting around a system limit, you will be banned. Unless, of course, you do it in a way that is completely undetectable (consistently different IP addresses at a minimum, there are several other methods they use to detect an individual) Commented Apr 29, 2011 at 14:27
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4@Blankman, that's simply not true; "spiteful"/"baseless" voting is automatically undone by the system. In the interest of fairness, I just loaded the two downvoted questions. One really was bad, so I added a downvote. The other was kind of borderline, but an extra minute spent on clarity and grammar would have helped a lot.– PopsCommented Apr 29, 2011 at 14:56
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28Why does someone with this much asking experience have questions that get downvoted at all, Adam?– WelbogCommented Apr 29, 2011 at 15:10
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8@Adam Davis: And the most of them seem have 0 votes. That's not exactly good either Commented Apr 29, 2011 at 15:21
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15It's not so much that they're jealous of your big arbitrary number, is that's users like you remind them just how arbitrary it really is.– WelbogCommented Apr 29, 2011 at 15:37
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3@Goran Of his last 100 questions (not counting those that have been deleted) 36 are above 0, 55 are 0, and 9 and below 0. Taking a sample of 100 questions asked last Friday afternoon as a "control" sample, there are 31 questions above 0, 66 at 0, and 3 below zero. More telling, however, is that he got 124 votes over his last 100 questions, or an average of 1.24 upvotes per question. However, the control group only got 66 - less than one vote per question. If anything, blankman is above average in terms of contributing quality questions to SO, if you can infer quality from the vote count. Commented Apr 29, 2011 at 15:52
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36@Adam Davis - comparing a user who has been a member for 2years 5 months to an arbitrary control group is comparing apples to oranges. Someone who has been a member that long, asked nearly 1.5k questions and achieved 172 badges should know how to ask questions that don't get downvoted.– RobCommented Apr 29, 2011 at 15:54
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Per balpha's comment:
This limit has only been in existance for a couple of hours. The actual message is "Sorry, you are only allowed to ask 50 questions in a 30 day period"; it's (currently) only active on the trilogy sites. – balpha♦
The reason is the same as most limits that have been built into the system:
- Discover, find, or become aware of behavior that doesn't grow, or worse, causes decline, in the community and site
- Look for "tells" of that behavior - things that are out of the ordinary (and thus easy to detect with automated processes) that correlate strongly with that undesired behavior
- Implement a limit, heuristic, or algorithm to (hopefully gently) discourage the undesired behavior
Recently Stack Exchange, Inc has been focusing a lot of time and effort on the problem of Low Quality questions. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the undesirable behavior that this limit is meant to help with is the problem of low quality posts.
Chances are good they've found a correlation between the quantity of questions a user posts and the quality of those posts.
Intuitively I find this correlation to be reasonable - If you want to ask 50 questions, but you can only ask 30, chances are good you're only going to ask those questions that are the most important, difficult, or that you feel you'd spend the most time solving yourself.
But the limit is so high that it is not liable to affect many users. Further, the limit is over 30 days, so for instance I could go ahead and ask 30 questions about my current project over a day or two if I had a real roadblock to overcome, but I'm not likely to need to do that too often. This limit is very supportive of the bursty behavior that can happen in programming. Much better than saying you can only ask 2.3 questions per day, which would affect many more people.
answered Apr 29, 2011 at 14:24
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19"I hadn't realized there was a limit" -- This limit has only been in existance for a couple of hours. The actual message is "Sorry, you are only allowed to ask 50 questions in a 30 day period"; it's (currently) only active on the trilogy sites. Commented Apr 29, 2011 at 14:28
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1why would a user have to submit a screenshot of a built-in feature? haha....sorry that's just strange. its like radio stations broadcasting where the police have setup a speed trap :)– BlankmanCommented Apr 29, 2011 at 14:39
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3@Blankman Screenshots are non-subjective. When troubleshooting a problem I'm not familiar with, it can help me understand the context better. Given recent information (ie, the exact error, and an employee chiming in) there's no need for it. Commented Apr 29, 2011 at 14:41
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10@Blankman, it would have helped a lot here. I had to edit your question twice to get the correct information in there! Of course, the literal error text would have sufficed too.– ArjanCommented Apr 29, 2011 at 14:44
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3@Blankman, just a tip: Actually, the literal text of the error message is a lot better than a screenshot (since then it's searchable!), and it's easily provided. Commented Apr 29, 2011 at 15:56
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@balpha: It would be really better to have this as an answer, so that one can easily link to it! Commented Apr 29, 2011 at 15:57
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@HendrikVogt (and Adam): It's not really an answer now, is it? Commented Apr 29, 2011 at 16:06
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2@balpha true, but my answer wasn't really an answer either. But I've updated my answer to include your information and address the question more directly, and so I think we're all set here. Commented Apr 29, 2011 at 16:10
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1@balpha, am I right to assume this is some sliding window, that only looks back 30 days before today?– ArjanCommented May 3, 2011 at 9:11
In my opinion, there should be more limits like this and limits should be even more restrictive. Many people on Stack Overflow (and other sites) have extraordinary skill sets in different areas and they are so kind to share their knowledge base with others. During the last few weeks I became little bit suspicious that many OPs abuse this by asking question about any problem they hit without even trying to solve it alone.
I think that Stack Overflow and other sites are not consultancy or trainings for free! Because of that I believe that 50 questions per month are too many. I would reduce it to 20-25 with an additional rule which will allow asking more questions if the user also answers questions of another community members. Something like: If you want to ask more, give something back to the community.
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1This was proposed in at least one form and it did not go over well... meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86165/… Commented May 1, 2011 at 10:22
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2@Jeff: Ok, it was just idea but I think my proposal is little bit different. I don't want to cap total number of questions user can ask or reduce further asking if questions are not upvoted as proposed in linked question. My proposal targets this question with cap for period of time where cap will not be fixed if user also participate in community. Commented May 1, 2011 at 10:35
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you are nuts, it should be increased to 100 at least. 3 questions per day is a good number Commented Oct 20, 2011 at 9:23
I'm a person who asks lots of questions - really, sometimes I ask two questions every day for several days in a row because I go through terra incognita of some new technology (currently Windows Azure) and really need to ask those questions. Even with that it happens to be about 30 questions per month. So while my first reaction was "WTF, that's a too harsh limit", after carefully looking at facts I see that it's not a problem even for me.
answered Jun 14, 2011 at 14:09
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6@random: Yes, I use the search, and I use the debugger and I think several times before asking. Commented Jun 14, 2011 at 14:19
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2@Luis: Do you mean "so low I can't ask all questions I want" or "so low any sane person can ask enough questions"? Commented Oct 20, 2011 at 9:33
Asking questions puts a burden on the site. It is a burden that most site members are willing to bear, because answering them provides a service that benefits the site.
The issues with "more than 50 questions in 30 days" are, 1) should one person be allowed to ask a disproportionate number of questions (and impose a disproportionate burden) on the site and 2) could the site handle a large number of such people?
If you were a "Jon Skeets" who also answered a large number of questions, then you'd be operating at a high level on BOTH sides of the equation. Then we could have a very interesting debate about whether or not it benefits the site to have one person operating at such a high level.
But the record (on Stack Overflow anyway) shows that you ask FAR more than you answer. Under the circumstances, a policy limiting the imbalance seems like a reasonable one.
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1"Asking questions puts a burden on the site..." Um...asking questions supports, rather than burdening, the site. A Q&A site without questions is tumbleweed city, as opposed to the massive advertising income generator SE is. Commented Oct 6, 2014 at 14:41
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@T.J.Crowder: And the followup was: "It is a burden that most site members are willing to bear, because answering them provides a service that benefits the site...The record (on Stack Overflow anyway) shows that you ask FAR more than you answer." I also went on to discuss the pros and cons of the issue. So your comment takes my opening "out of context."– Tom AuCommented Oct 6, 2014 at 14:48
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My point is that I disagree with the premise that asking is a burden in the first place, not whether it's an "okay" burden people are willing to put up with. Questions are valuable and encouraged. Commented Oct 6, 2014 at 15:06
Maybe it's not a case when talking about Mr Blankman, who rarely answers, but I was kinda shocked when I find out that there is 50 questions limit, while it is encouraged to answer Your own questions. (But I understand why now)
There are new things being developed all the time, in many already invented there are people lacking understanding of many things. What if someone would take up the glove, made some "FAQ's" and exhaustingly answered many of major questions in some topic, greatly explaining how things works, then he find out that his desire to help others gave him nothing but blockade and inability of ask when he is the one who needs help?
Shouldn't such a contribution be, if not honoured, at least not penalized? Maybe if someone answers his own questions and it is favoured by community (like many up-votes in short period of time), they shouldn't count into this 50?
I understand that even such a system can be abused and someone's answers on his own questions can have very low quality. But if we would find a fine way to distinguish one from another, what do you think about this? It can have a future. Wouldn't it be more useful and encouraging for people who would contribute a lot in this way, and also for these who only ask a lot to contribute something more instead? ;)
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12Do you have an example of someone posting anywhere near to 50 self-answered questions in a month that are useful and upvoted? Kudos to anyone that can but I've never seen it.– PeterJCommented Apr 15, 2014 at 11:29
Why is this question downvoted? bah! – Blankman 7 mins agofor the same reason that you're not hearing anyone say what you want them to say, because the objective here is that you're doing something wrong. You're likely one of a handful of people to EVER see this message. I don't think I could try to ask 50 meaningful questions in one month....