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What should be the approach to someone who posts a large number of similar questions? Does SE have some method for general readers to call for a ban, or is this up to some upper-level moderator? An added thought: in all the other SO or SE sections I visit, there is the expectation that one has done some research or attempts at answering before posting a question. In the case which led me to put up this meta-question, there was nothing to indicate any previous effort.
Is it the case that, here in music.SE, it's considered acceptable to toss out questions without any background effort? To my mind, the series of near-identical posts was barely more complicated than asking "how does a violinist interpret Bach" followed by "how ... ...violist..." and then "guitarist..." , "piano" , and so on.

Or am I being overly sensitive here and should just apply a NOT(submitter=="some_guy") filter to my browsing?

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    A ban? Moderator attention? He is not braking any rules, and he is asking perfectly good and on-topic questions. You will hate it here if some day our QPD goes beyond 10.
    – TaylorSwiftFan5932
    Aug 9, 2014 at 2:29
  • Not having seen the original question and comments, it did appear to be a lot of formulaic questions without a lot of ... <*something*>. It appeared potentially to set an undesirable precedent. +1 for bringing it to meta. ... At this point the questions have been shored-up with better titles and texts, and they have some very good answers. So we're safe ... for now. Keep up the vigilance, lose the torches. :)
    – luser droog
    Aug 18, 2014 at 5:33

2 Answers 2

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The community defines rules, and rules can affect a ban. The community itself should not campaign for bans of individual users -- they should flag them for moderator attention, so that action can be taken if indeed they are found to be in conflict with the community guidelines.

In the particular case of excessive question posting, the rate at which a question is posted has no bearing on whether or not it is a good or bad question. If someone reaches the user QPD rate limit and is posting nothing but gold-plated fantastic questions, the community should be thankful.

However, questions should NOT be posted solely to artificially inflate the QPD site statistic. That is not sustainable, and it's pretty obvious to the point of not making a difference since SE administrators can pretty clearly see what's going on.

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    Plus, too many poor questions will ultimately hurt our good statistics like answers per question.
    – Bradd Szonye
    Aug 11, 2014 at 4:12
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According to the The Complete Rate-Limiting Guide on Meta SE, under Asking, you can see that users are allowed to ask a

maximum of 6 questions per day
maximum of 50 questions per 30 days

So, every user is allowed to ask as many questions, as long as the questions are legitimate ones and not spam.

If you think that the questions of the specific user are spam, you can flag them for moderation attention and mention the problem there.

I, personally, think that they are acceptable questions, that the user asked all together.

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    "Spam" may be slightly hyperbolic, but when I see a long stack of submissions like the ones in question my reaction is that we've got someone posting who really hasn't bothered to stop to do any research on his own (or to think about what really matters).
    – Carl Witthoft
    Aug 8, 2014 at 22:18
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    You can post that as a comment to a question of his. They might not be the best-quality questions, but this far they are legitimate ones. You might need an answer from a mod for further explanations
    – Shevliaskovic
    Aug 8, 2014 at 22:20
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    @CarlWitthoft Since when is previous research expected or required here? If anything questions should be concise, and only include additional information if it's absolutely necessary.
    – TaylorSwiftFan5932
    Aug 9, 2014 at 2:32
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    @JCPedroza Since when is research, or at least some thought, not expected? You might as well say it's ok to post 12 questions each of which asks for the wavelength of C, C#, ...B.
    – Carl Witthoft
    Aug 9, 2014 at 11:55
  • @CarlWitthoft False equivalences will not get you far here. Don't waste your time.
    – TaylorSwiftFan5932
    Aug 9, 2014 at 12:49
  • Too late, I fear :-(
    – Carl Witthoft
    Aug 9, 2014 at 13:13
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    @JCPedroza Previous research is heavily encouraged -- the more effort you put into your question, the better answer you will get. I think I heard Joel Spolsky elaborate on this in SE podcast #59 from a few weeks ago.
    – NReilingh
    Aug 9, 2014 at 19:35

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