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I've been on the site for a couple of days now and have published a few questions. I've noticed that some of them are getting downvoted. I assume this might be either because some users don't find them useful or due to my writing style.

The first possibility depends on the viewer, and I can't change the themes of my questions, since I'm asking about things that genuinely confuse me—even after researching, reading about them, and checking for similar questions.

So, I'm more interested in the second reason. I believe I'm following the site's policies, as I've read about the recommended style for questions and answers.

That said, I wanted to ask: what are some common mistakes that you see new users make when asking questions—especially regarding writing style or clarity? Feedback on either my writing or general advice would be really helpful.

so i thought i should ask what kind of stuff that you see new users falling to implement when asking question wether it would be directed to my writing style or in general both would help ?

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    \$\begingroup\$ One observation of this meta post is that you don't use correct punctuation and capitalization. The whole first paragraph is one single sentence. Things like that easily attract down votes since the post is simply hard to read. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 21 at 7:58
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Lundin Thank you , i will start paying attention to those types of details . \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 21 at 8:56
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    \$\begingroup\$ Adding your assumptions into why you have received downvotes is just complicating your question and making it harder to answer. Tautology is another problem; we know you are talking about your questions but you reiterate that straight after the 1st comma (which should probably be a period). Ditto a tautology after you say you are confused (clearly that will be after researching and reading about them). These things make your question(s) really inaccessible. Simplicity is a keyword here. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 21 at 10:24
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Andyaka yeah i kind of noticed that i have a habit of adding my thought process in whatever question i am asking, hoping that if something is off with the logic it would be easier to correct, but i also lose focus complicating the overall flow and drifting away from the main theme of the question, i will try to simplify them going forward and add relevant info if asked for in the comments \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 21 at 10:29
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    \$\begingroup\$ English is possibly a 2nd language to you so, you might be disadvantaged from the start. Like I said in my answer, writing a good question is harder than writing a good answer. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 21 at 10:36
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Andyaka it is a second language , yet i have to admit phrasing a good question is hard in my mother tongue as well, thank you for the input \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 21 at 10:40
  • \$\begingroup\$ I downvoted almost immediately based upon the criteria of "it is unclear." Why is it unclear? @Ludin already explained this. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Apr 17 at 21:05

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You've asked four questions and two have been downvoted by me. I don't believe there have been other downvotes.

  • Your first question hasn't been downvoted but, has been answered yet, you have not recognized any usefulness in that answer because you don't appear to have upvoted it. Do you have a reason for this?
  • Your 2nd question contains this profoundly wrong assertion: -

Most signals in the world are analog and in order to study them, filter them, or amplify them, we need to represent them digitally.

I mean, consider the Andromeda galaxy; it's distance was first calculated in the 1920s by Hubble (the person); do you think he used digital methods?

So, I downvoted it because of that and, stopped reading any more. The message is clear; your question indicates no sign of proper research (a perfectly valid reason for downvoting).

from what i understand when we are looking at a linear circuit with independent sources while being interested in describing the electrical properties of the system at the terminals

It's an incomplete sentence.

Your 2nd sentence (really a 6 line paragraph) is some kind of preamble to what you are going to ask but, it's couched in such a way as to be fairly undecipherable. Your 3rd paragraph/sentence is also coming over as undecipherable: -

now what i am interested in asking (assuming i grasped the basic intution) is first regarding the cases when internal dependent sources exists ,while proving i did not take them into account , when they exist do i basically turn them to shortcuts and open circuits to find...\$R_t\$ and keep them when doing the internal part ?

Your next paragraph/sentence is a shopping question (See What topics can I ask about here?)

secondly in case of non linear circuit i can't use Thevenin since proving it required linearity are there similar tools for non linear circuits that i can read about for future reference ?

So, at that point I downvoted and moved on.

My advice is plan your question and stick to that question. No need to try and support your question with badly presented theory or erroneous assertions. I find that it's harder to write a good question than to write a good answer and, the reason is because there is a clear focal point when making an answer. Try and make a clear focal point when asking a question.

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    \$\begingroup\$ thank you much appreciated , for the first question i am waiting for some answer regarding the uses of I-R characteristics graphs , i found the answer useful but still not what i am searching for , the second one i certainly was off with the phrasing i was saying need instead of we can , but i perfectly understand the point of view , and in general the size of the messages that i write or how i phrase them is off i have hard time pointing out what are the causes or fixing them this helps alot , thank you for your time \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 21 at 10:27
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Andyaka I get your points, but this isn't very helpful. People want to get help, if they ask questions here. So why - sorry for the directness here - you are throwing stones in their way. The main purpose of this forum is to help others and not to discourage them or make their life even harder. Many get frustrated if they see downvotes for banal reasons like you have mentioned. It would be better to clearly state what your problem is (in the comments?) and if nothing changes then you could give a downvote., but i believe that shouldn't be the first action. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Mar 16 at 11:30
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    \$\begingroup\$ @PhiPhox why don't you raise this as a brand new meta post. Also, ask the OP if he feels now that I was throwing stones in their way. Better answers can only be made with better questions. There are plenty of posts by new users that have done zero research; I mean a simple google question would have given them what they wanted. There are also plenty of new posts that plainly assert incorrect things. Do you want to make it your personal quest to fix these things? Do you want site volunteers to spend time fixing bad newcomer questions rather than spending time answering good questions? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Mar 16 at 11:38
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Unfortunately there are some people on this site who downvote questions and don't remove the downvote when the question is acceptable. In addition to this the downvoting is driving new users away and decreasing overall site traffic.

I think the main thing is people don't want to see questions about homework, and if they do, they need to have an attempt at a solution and have correct citations and sources when referencing external material. Proper capitalization and grammar goes a long way, so run your post through a checker.

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    \$\begingroup\$ I would love a setting to get notifications when a post I've downvoted has been edited. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 21 at 5:23
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    \$\begingroup\$ @pipe - Hi, I do that by "following" the question. You'll get a notification if that followed question is edited or closed. You also get a notification for new answers on that question (which is effectively noise, if you only want to get notifications about edits to the question). Did you try that? Or was the noise of other activity on the question (e.g. new answers) too much? (Same thing applies to answers, which can also be followed to get notifications of edits or closure). || I just realised that another thing which adds to the noise is notification of every comment on a followed post :( \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 21 at 5:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ @SamGibson Wow, that button was "hidden", why is follow such a different concept from Save which has its own icon in a different place? No, haven't tried it, not sure I would actually think to do that if I see what I believe to be a "downvote-worthy" question. I might try it in the future. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 21 at 6:14
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    \$\begingroup\$ @pipe - I don't know the history, sorry. In case it helps, the main Meta.SE post about the "follow" feature seems to be this one (several others exist, but I see most were closed as a duplicate of this one): meta.stackexchange.com/questions/345661/… - As you said, you could give it a try on a post. The word will change to "following" after you click "follow" i.e. it's a toggle, so you can unfollow a followed post when you want to, by clicking "following". \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 21 at 6:39
  • \$\begingroup\$ In all fairness, I ran the OP's meta question here through MS Word spelling + grammar check (which I naively assumed would be a good one). It only had 3 things to offer: incorrect capitalization of I , a misspelled whether and a complaint about the space between help and ? . But nothing about all sentences having wrong capitalization and incorrect punctuation. So in the year 2025, the best solution is still apparently to study English in school rather than relying on bad tools like MS Word. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Feb 21 at 12:00
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    \$\begingroup\$ @VoltageSpike Is there any why to complain about those downvotes? In my opinion, this feature is used too excessively here. Often times one gets downvotes for banal reasons or incomplete research ... But when is the research complete? If I would understand the whole topic, then i don't need a forum like that. What's the point? The most concerning point is, that nearly 80% (or even more) of all new questions get a downvote ... That is frustrating and not helpful at all. This forum is abandoning itself. For the record: It is now 2025 and nothing has changed ... I am more than concerned! \$\endgroup\$ Commented Mar 16 at 11:37

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