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When a user account has asked too many low-quality questions, they are blocked from asking more questions. Attempting to to ask a new question from that account will result in the following error page:

You have reached your question limit

Minimalist would be an optimistic description of that error page. True, it does link to the full Help Center article on question bans, but in my experience, vanishingly few users click through to actually read that page.

Instead, what most users do is immediately create a new account—which is exactly what they should not be doing.

Therefore, I suggest adding some warning text directly to the error page, telling users not to try and work around the question ban by creating a new account. I would also suggest changing the potentially-misleading title text, which refers to a "question limit". The question "limit" is in place only because of a quality problem with their previous questions.

I envision something simple yet direct, like:

You have asked too many poorly-received questions


Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account. This is due to your having asked a large number of questions that were poorly received by our community.

See the Help Center to learn more.

Please do not create a new account. This will not lift the question ban. Instead, work on improving your existing questions in order to bring them into compliance with the site's guidelines.

Bikeshed Iterate all you like on the example text above, but this page needs to explicitly tell question-banned users not to create new accounts.

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    Exactly, like we should also be telling people not to repeat closed questions ... insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein Commented Dec 5, 2020 at 10:10
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    I agree, and I would suggest even stronger wording than, "This will not lift the question ban." Please correct me if I'm wrong, but can't creating a new account to get around a Q-ban make the penalty even worse? Commented Dec 5, 2020 at 11:01
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    Hard to make the penalty worse than "blocked", @HovercraftFullOfEels. Even when the evaders do create new accounts, mods just delete them. There's a big win in keeping the text as short and simple as possible (which suggests I'm not the one to write it!), and there are diminishing marginal returns as we increase the threatening tone. I've found the more you try to threaten people about creating new accounts, the more militaristic they become with a "you can't stop me" attitude. Ultimately, we do struggle to stop them, so I'd rather not threaten, just advise. Just short-circuit the instinct.
    – Cody Gray Mod
    Commented Dec 5, 2020 at 11:08
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    @CodyGray: re, "Hard to make the penalty worse than "blocked"" -- but does using a sock-puppet change the potential duration of the block? Commented Dec 5, 2020 at 11:20
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    I don't know how it would, really. The block is permanent, until the user digs themselves out of it by increasing their overall quality score. If you're asking whether having deleted sockpuppet accounts somehow contributes to lowering the "master" account's overall quality score... not as far as I know. But there's not a lot of details provided about how the question bans work, even to moderators. So, it's possible, yes, but doesn't make intuitive sense to me. @hov
    – Cody Gray Mod
    Commented Dec 5, 2020 at 11:23
  • OK, sorry. Perhaps I was thinking more of "throttled" accounts, rather than banned ones Commented Dec 5, 2020 at 11:28
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    "Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from this account" definitely sounds to me like "but we may accept questions from another one". Commented Dec 6, 2020 at 18:03
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    Why does SO always feel the need to sugar coat things and say "poorly received"? You should be explicitly calling out that their previous questions are absolute rank garbage. It can still be said in a matter of fact way: "You have asked too many low quality questions"
    – JK.
    Commented Dec 6, 2020 at 20:40
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    @JK. I'm not SO, and my choice of the phrase "poorly received" was not intended to sugar-coat anything. It is more accurate. The problem is that their questions were poorly received by voting members of the community. We use that as a proxy to assess quality. We don't have any direct measure of quality other than how a question was received by the community. I don't want the message to sound like someone in authority went through and manually assessed the quality of their questions. This is an automated block based on how questions are received, so the message should reflect that.
    – Cody Gray Mod
    Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 0:34
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    @MarcSances Fair point. The technical details shouldn't leak into the error message anyway. How about: "Sorry, we can no longer accept your questions, as your previously questions were poorly received by our community." Better?
    – Cody Gray Mod
    Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 0:36
  • I think the question ban page should also warn users not to just post their questions on MSO/MSE/[insert arbitrary SE site] instead (example). Should that be an answer to this question, or a question in its own right?
    – F1Krazy
    Commented Dec 23, 2020 at 13:24
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    Users who are question-banned on SO cannot post on MSO, so that loophole is already closed. They are still allowed to post on MSE, but I would argue that there are diminishing marginal returns for each condition that we try to add to this message. Keeping it shorter and punchier is better. We have a detailed FAQ about it, too, which evidence says nobody ever reads. @F1Krazy
    – Cody Gray Mod
    Commented Dec 23, 2020 at 13:27
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    Mini-ABS-Feedback: "poorly-received" (in Header) => = "Low-Quality" // "from this account" => is a "Call" for the User to create a New Account...! // "large number" is vague, give the Number... // "Please do not create a new account. This will not lift the question ban." => Hum, OK, I'll create a New Account through Proxy/VPN, making sure with "different" IP... / Want to improve the "Workflow"...? => Warn the User already at 4 VLQ Qt's (if the Limit/Ban is at 5 VLQ Qt's) that they still have 1 Qt (= 1 last chance) before the Ban and they should improve the Qlt of their previous Qt's... :idea:
    – chivracq
    Commented Apr 1, 2022 at 6:02
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    IP = IP address. VLQ = very low quality. Qt = question. Qt's = questions. Qlt = quality. Commented Apr 1, 2022 at 16:56
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    I don't have enough imagination for "ABS". It is not in the glossary. Advanced behavioural science? Australian Bureau of Statistics? A/B testing something? Commented Apr 1, 2022 at 17:05

1 Answer 1

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We went ahead and updated the copy on the Ask Ban error page. It now looks like this (screenshot):

You can't post new questions right now


Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions from your account because most of your questions need improvement or are out of scope for this site. See the Help Center page Why are questions no longer being accepted from my account? to learn more.

Please do not create a new account. Instead, work on improving your existing questions by editing them to comply with the site's guidelines and address any feedback you've received. You can also continue to contribute to the site in other ways, such as editing other posts to improve them.

We also took the liberty of updating similar errors for question and answer bans. Now, all of them should look similar to the following copy:

Sorry, we are no longer accepting questions/answers from your account because most of your answers need improvement or do not sufficiently answer the question. See the Help Center to learn more.

I appreciate the care in reporting better communication with our community; it's something dear to me.

Also kudos to V2Blast for coming up with the adjustment for the copies (different locations needed different text to fit the layout).

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    This is fantastic; thank you for finally finding time to make these updates!! I could suggest nitpicky grammar improvements, but the important part is in there now, so I guess I'll hold back. :-)
    – Cody Gray Mod
    Commented Aug 11, 2022 at 22:20
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    Thanks for getting these updates implemented, Felippe! :) I've now updated the quotes of these messages on the question-bans and answer-bans Help Center pages as well (network-wide).
    – V2Blast StaffMod
    Commented Aug 11, 2022 at 23:15

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