Moderator attention needed

Question

I'm not sure if this is on topic here, please suggest better place if not. If I may, I'd like to ask @Adam and @Undo to review this.

I've asked 2 questions today, both of them are put on hold by @ArtOfCode and downvoted, which I'm not sure is justified.

Here's first, this one indeed can very well be off-topic depending how you look at it. After tossing comments with @ArtOfCode I also find this question being put on hold and downvoted, which to me seems pretty much on topic.

As a user I find both cases rather turning off then inspiring to participate. Please help me understand if I'm doing anything wrong or the questions are fine.

I know you guys have a tough job moderating. I'd love to see this community grow. Thanks for taking the time.

Answer 1

Reasoning

I didn't just close your questions because I felt like it; there were reasons for each closure. Here they are.

• Sell GTX 980 in favour of RX 480?
  I closed this as primarily opinion based. If you take out the extra details in that post, the base question you're left with is this:

  Would you sell GTX 980 for RX 480, pros/cons?

  I can't see any way of reading that question so that it's not opinion-based - opinions seem to be exactly what you're asking for. Opinion-based questions are generally closed on Stack Exchange because they don't fit the Stack Exchange model, which is built for questions and answers rather than discussion.

  This question is also off-topic, even if it wasn't opinion-based - see my explanation below.

• Geekbench 3 as performance prediction for games
  I used a custom reason to close this one, namely:

  I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it doesn't appear to be about hardware recommendations.

  I did debate between that and using the technical support reason; either would have worked here. There's also potential to use unclear what you're asking. Again removing the extra details, the base question we have is this:

  If a certain CPU has twice geekbench score of some other CPU, would it really perform twice better in games?

  First off, what's a geekbench? That's a little unclear, if you could add a link to what you're referring to, that would go a long way there.

  Second off, and most importantly, the scope of this site is to allow:

  • asking for a recommendation of hardware to perform a specific task
  • pre-purchase questions, such as specific instances of "what type of hardware do I need?"

  The scope of this site does not allow technical support questions, or those that don't ask for one of the above. The question you asked appears to be looking for technical support or a technical analysis of CPU's, which doesn't ask for a recommendation.

Downvotes

Just to clarify:

...put on hold by @ArtOfCode and downvoted, which I'm not sure is justified.

Downvotes are (a) anonymous, and (b) personal - anyone can downvote any post for (almost) any reason. There's deliberately no way to tell who downvoted your post.

The major exception to that rule is serial voting: votes are intended to be for posts, not for users. Voting on posts simply because they've been posted by a specific person isn't allowed. (Note: not saying you're doing that, just noting it down.)

Answer 2

I'm not a mod here (though I was a mod at SR, which had a similar odd scope and very different problems and am a SU mod). I am a high rep user here, so I have a good idea of what might be on topic here (I hope).

Your questions are both just off topic, and that there's a misunderstanding of the scope of the site. Its not just you, and I've seen worse, but that's what it is.

Your questions are

1. Polling for opinions.
2. asking about the impact of a single benchmark for performance.

as a rule of thumb it might be worth looking at open questions - most of them go "these are my needs, this is my budget, I live here". An great answer needs to be a suggestion of a specific piece of hardware, and its merits and demerits, and a good question tries to elicit that.