What recourse is there for a post that is locked for reasons that one does not understand or agree with?

Question

This post: < Best practices for refactoring parameter file structure in multiple environments > was locked.

I believe I set out a very dispassionate and objective counter-argument to the points raised in the comments there. I appreciate the comments, but am puzzled by them.

As referenced there, this post on "Good Subjective v. Bad Subjective" seems to cite many properties that are to be used when assessing the usefulness of a subjective question.

The commenters appeared to use a straw-man argument about posts that are plainly just literature requests. I agree such posts are not constructive, but my question is not at all just a literature request for the reasons that I cited in the comments to the question.

I even made attempts to carefully word my questions so as to remove any ambiguity about the reference request sub-portion of the question. These edits were repeatedly deleted and rollbacks were made to the commenters preferred editions of the question.

Is there any way that I may enforce my last set of edits, and to have that version be the "locked version"? This process seems unfair to me, given that I tried to provide very concrete examples of the ways in which I was adhering to the needed properties for a good subjective question.

Of course, the process may not actually be unfair and I'm willing to give the commenters the benefit of the doubt. If this is the case, may I please have a more clearly articulated defense of the commenters chosen edits, specifically not relying on the following two mis-applied ideas:

1. The straw-man argument about posts that are purely literature requests.
2. The notion that "all questions implicitly contain reference requests". The Good v. Bad subjective post says that good subjective posts insist on references (that's the precise language used). This strongly insinuates an active position of the question's author to insist on reference requests.

Follow-up Question

I am also concerned that moderators are able to use the locking feature to privilege their preferred version of edits. For example, in this case, I made some edits and the moderator first rolled them back and then applied the lock. This seems like an unfair use of power. Why the presumption that the moderator's opinion about the edits is the one that deserves locked status, as opposed to whatever the most recent version is.

To put it another way, if there is anything close to a 50/50 chance that my argument is sound and my edits are fine, it seems like an unfair asymmetry in the discussion to allow the moderator to make changes then lock, as opposed to lock first.

Critically this is not an argument that this action was unfair to me, but rather that it is unfair to the community. I totally love the idea that posts do not belong to me. I'm all for that. But in a case like this, the community is primed by the moderator's choices, rather than something less partial such as whatever edits happened to occur last. New viewers will form an initial opinion about the post as it is right now, and if they have prior beliefs that you need a lot of inertia to justify changes, this implicitly favors the moderator's choices, which runs counter to what the community wants via the locking mechanism in the first place.

There's some ambiguity between the proper order of operations here:

1. Lock question as-is
2. discuss the issues that are causing trouble
3. include additional community members and moderators to ensure nothing is done out of idiosyncratic opinions alone and
4. make rollbacks if needed and unlock the question.

That's very different from:

1. Rollback to changes that I prefer
2. discuss or not

Answer 1

The recourse for having a post locked is to post on Meta. Now that it's here, all of the mods are notified. The lock is temporary (unfortunately, the options are rather limited, though) and can be lifted early once a resolution is achieved. Continually rolling back valid edits to your post is not constructive, and a lock is the only mechanism available to deal with it, so that an appropriate Meta discussion can happen to reach consensus.

I'll let other mods and community members weigh in with their thoughts as well, but here are my problems with your edits, even after being warned against them by a long-time and high reputation member of the community and myself, a community moderator.

(the criterion set out in the "Good Subjective vs. Bad Subjective" discussion)

This is meta, not relevant to your question. This applies to all questions asked and answers posted on the Stack Exchange network. In essence, it's noise in your question that detracts from what you are trying to ask. It should be edited out.

Can you provide widely-cited sources to bolster any thoughts on (1) or (2) above, to foster a more thorough discussion of proposed ideas (please do not merely post answers that are purely references to outside sources).

Stack Exchange sites are not suitable for discussions. If you want a discussion, it's best to use a forum, or perhaps a chat room. On Stack Exchange, most sites have their own chat room - the Programmers chat room is The Whiteboard. You can also make your own once you have sufficient reputation on any site in the network (which you do). Mentioning having a discussion in a question (even if it's not your intent or supported by the rest of the body of the question) tends to attract unwarranted down and close votes.

Also, answers that are purely links to, citations of, or references to outside resources are already forbidden under our How to Answer guidelines, so there's no need to include the additional "noise" in a post telling people not to do it - it's meta and should be edited out. If questions start attracting bad answers, it can be protected against low reputation users. Down votes and deletion votes can be used to remove any answers that do not meet our expectations and quality guidelines.

Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature when it comes to these kinds of

Inherently, it is expected that answers leverage a combination of personal experiences and various external references. Asking for sources is not only meta, but makes your question read like a reference request (which are not allowed on Programmers, per 1 2 3 and the other Meta discussions and blog posts they link to. Asking explicitly for resources, even if it's not the full intent of your question, does tend to attract unwarranted down votes and close votes and is inherently part of any question asked on any Stack Exchange site.

Answer 2

After looking at the question, the edit history and the discussions about both so far, I want to add a few notes.

The lock on the question is not because the question itself is bad or wrong or unsuitable. The question got locked because there is a disagreement on how to formulate certain parts of the question and is only meant to avoid polluting the history of the question while those disagreements are sorted out here. The locking of a question is certainly not a precursor to closing or deleting it.

In its first revision, the question was basically fine, but it contained some phrases that, by experience, tend to trigger close votes, even if those close votes are in reality inappropriate. I believe that that was the for the first edit and everything after that is down to a disagreement on the validity of the edit.

The 'trigger phrase' in this case was the explicit request for literature references. It is my experience that questions with such an explicit request don't do well here (regardless of what any blog post might say about asking for references). Many people regard it as a veiled request for outside resources (regardless of the rest of the question and the intentions of the asker) and will vote to close based on that.
Personally, even if the question is right up in my alley, I skip it if it explicitly asks for literature references, because I usually don't have the time to hunt down the appropriate references for my answer, provided that I have them in a format that you can easily reference in the first place. I would be very surprised if I am the only one that has such a policy.

Answer 3

I reviewed the question, the comments, the edits...

The post was locked because of repeated attempts to change the question in a way that the community was in disagreement with.

Besides that I am largely in agreement with ThomasOwens.

Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says "Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references."

You keep insisting that this is not a shopping request yet keep attempting to add the request for external resources? This is by its very nature a shopping request.

Other than that I have nothing more to add than what was already said. It seems already talked to death.

Answer 4

You seem to believe that question locked for content dispute at meta should remain at main site as originally posted ("Lock question as-is"). This approach doesn't make sense to me.

For the purpose of meta discussion, it is insignificant what particular revision is hanging on the main site because full revision history and original version are always available to study content and edits in as much details as needed.

With above in mind, I would expect moderator locking the post to take whatever edits deemed appropriate in order to make it look OK for regular, inexperienced readers of the site - for those who just read what is posted and don't pay attention to obscure, strictly internal notices about meta, content dispute etc.

From this perspective, I would expect moderators to err on the safer side, performing pre-dispute cleanup of the content. Given that final version of the content is to be determined by community discussion at meta anyway, I see no point to fixate about what is there on the main site during the dispute (it helps that locked post can not be voted, thus question score can't be influenced until it's unlocked back).

It is worth noting that expecting mentioned cleanup to be performed by asker would be a really bad idea, as they are naturally biased.

In your particular case, part cleaned up at main site prior to dispute is: "Are there any definitive or widely cited sources of best practices literature". To me, cleaning it up looks reasonable safety wise, as this part of the question makes a perfect match to one of the close reasons:

Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Programmers as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.

_{Oh and please don't tell me that it's safe to keep because this part is hidden deep inside your "main" question. It's there and readers will find it. I remember myself being new at Programmers, carefully studying questions, stumbling upon resource-request parts and posting low quality answers "look here's the resource you asked about: <link>".}

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I would like to also address one of the comments you made, likely intending to support the question with an authoritative reference:

Note that my post specifically implements the tactics referred to in that post to achieve usefulness as a subjective post. It isn't shopping for a source if you insist that an experience or widely-known principle be backed up by references. This is why it says "Great subjective questions insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references."

Your interpretation of Good Subjective, Bad Subjective article looks wrong to me.

My reading of the statement "questions insist that opinion be backed up" is that it's a strong prohibition against filling questions with a poison like "what's your opinion?", "what do you think?", "what do you prefer?"... and yeah, "which resource do you recommend".

Question should never have words like "what's your opinion" simply because this makes a wide open door for crappy answers where authors just post their opinion without even attempting to back it up.

Good question, in addition, is worded in a way that actually repels garbage answers - allowing readers, guys like you and me, to flag low quality posts for mod attention and request deletion on the ground that these don't answer the question asked.

• ^{Note that what's-your-opinion in the question immediately makes such flagging and demanding deletion impossible because, well, such answers match the questions asked. Same reasoning applies to resource requests - it is officially legal to post a low quality "I recommend this URL" and pretend that this just answers to what have been asked.}

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Now I would like to expand on what looks fundamentally wrong in your position.

You (and some other askers) re-post excerpts from the article, plainly translating these into requirements to answers and pretend that this makes your question compliant. Don't do that.

Above "translation" is purely yours, you have no grounds to state that this can be inferred from the article you refer.

Thing to remember is, this article states requirements for questions, not for the answers. Re-read it again and pay attention to the sub-title (quoted below, keeping font close to original):

Guidelines for Great Subjective Questions

Article is about guidelines for questions, plain and simple as in the title quoted above.

Whatever requirements for answers you stuff into your questions, you have no ground to link these to the article. These are all yours, and, frankly, from the perspective of those who read your question, these are pure noise, as these add nothing substantial to the question.

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Please don't pollute the question with requirements to answers - for readers, these are useless.

If, after reading particular answer, you feel like something is not OK there, check whether it fits answering guidelines and if you believe that it doesn't, feel free to raise your concerns.

Answer 5

I'll put my cards on the table.

I didn't vote to close your question, but if it was open when I noticed it, I would've voted to close it as 'Unclear What You're Asking' because:

1. I'm not sure which problem you're trying solve.
2. It's difficult to imagine a tool that could do what you're asking for.
   1. And if you're looking for a tool, then we should close it as Off-Topic because resource requests are off-topic.

But then I read this Meta question, and it seems like you tried to make some edits to rescue the question. That is, before the question got locked.

So I reconsidered my position.

But then I saw this comment:

Looking at the edit history of your post, it appears that you engaged in a series of repeated rollbacks, including the roll-back of an edit that a moderator made in an attempt to save your question by making it on-topic for the site. Your post getting locked is the risk you take when you engage in rollback wars, and when the mod locks your post, they get to decide which revision gets locked. – Robert Harvey 1 hour ago

And now I'm more convinced than ever that this question should be deleted.

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Also, in the future, I think you should try to be a little less verbose.

Like you, I graduated from an American school system that asked me to fill up blue books with essay after essay. But in the real world, less is more.

Please try to focus your questions on the core of your problem. Please don't take the scenic route.

Hope this helps!

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Per @EMS' latest comment, I must give him this:

1. He has a genuine problem (although it needs to be reworded).
2. @EMS is exactly the type of user that we need to retain on Programmers.SE.
   1. He puts effort into his posts.
   2. And he's genuinely curious about the rules because he'd like to follow them so that he can get answers to his questions.

@EMS: I regret that I cannot unilaterally unlock your question and rehabilitate it, but I hope that others (particularly moderators) will be able to give you the advice that you need.

Hope this helps!

Answer 6

I have another issue with the question, whether or not the edits were helpful. I can't see any of the comments made to the question itself due to it being locked. I'm not sure what the reputation requirement is for being able to see the comments, but why is there one at all to look at them? I can see not allowing new comments when the question is locked, but why don't we allow everyone to look at the comments already made? It makes it difficult to follow some of the discussion around the question when I can't see the comments.