Do I need to get the interest of all people here before I ask a question?

Question

I posted a question yesterday: Why does the Department of Mysteries keep prophecies?

And somebody dropped a comment saying

"I can't understand why people ask topics here that are not even significant"

and then I replied with

"if so, can you give me the details what's significant for you and what's significant for others? I assumed this site is for asking questions passing the guidelines and are on-topic and not what interest all users in here. That's a pretty hard thing for me to do."

I won't be able to post the actual comment because the user had deleted their comment.

It disappointed me that somebody would say "hey what kind of post is that? It isn't interesting at all!"

What I thought is that I just need to follow the guidelines in posting a question here. On-topic, duplicate avoidance, not opinion-based, and so on and so forth. But is getting the interest of all the users here also in the guidelines? Are significant questions for some allowed and significant questions for me and for some others not allowed? That's what disappointed me.

Maybe some will tell me this is just a small matter but I want to know if it is necessary to post a question that's important for all of the users here. Maybe some of you will give me advice. Do I need to get the interest of all people here before I ask a question?

Answer 1

Don't worry about it.

There's no question which will interest everyone. For that matter, there's no single sci-fi or fantasy franchise (not Harry Potter, not Star Wars, not Lord of the Rings) which will interest everyone. For any given question on this site, there will always be people who find it uninteresting. So no, you don't have to interest every single user with each question you ask. It simply wouldn't be feasible.

If someone leaves a comment which says essentially "I don't find this question interesting" without explaining why or offering any constructive criticism, feel free to flag it as "not constructive". And please, don't let it get to you!

But does getting interest of all the users here is also in the guidelines? Does the significant questions for some are allowed and the significant questions for me and for some are not allowed?

Please don't take a grumpy comment from a single user as a reflection of site policy. From the voting it's quite clear that the majority of people who saw your question liked and appreciated it. There'll always be at least one person who doesn't like a given question; that doesn't at all mean it's somehow not acceptable for the site. Keep your chin up, and keep on posting nice questions :-)

Answer 2

TL;DR: No, you don't need to get the interest of all people. People who leave such comments are wrong, you're right.

1. I don't understand why people bother not only reading, but leaving rude comments on questions they don't find interesting.

   Live and let live. For every question your opinionated self finds un-interesting/boring/meh, there are people who both find that question interesting; AND likely find some of the questions you personally like boring/uninteresting/meh.

   If we rid the site of the types of questions any small group of people dislikes... likelyhood is, we would be left with a site that has about 100 total questions.

   If you feel strongly enough to leave such a comment, and think enough people agree with you, post a proposal on Meta to bar specific question types. If you know that most people will disagree, stop posting hurtful comments to people whose only crime is not sharing your personal minority opinion of what's interesting.

2. If you as a user and especially question asker see such a comment:

   Ignore it, say non-nice things in your head about opinionated self-important person who left it, or better yet flag it (if moderators agree, as rude and offensive; otherwise, as not constructive).

   As long as your question doesn't have 2:1 or worse downvote/upvote ratio, such comments are meaningless, mean attacks that don't reflect anything but someone's personal opinion, and most certainly don't reflect your doing something wrong you should feel bad about as a question asker..

3. More personally, negative attitudes like the ones exhibited by the comment being asked about (as well as general unwillingness to abide by "live and live" approach) were one of the top reasons that drove me away from SFF as a user.