Specifically, this one: How should I handle the rest of my party, who believe all Necromancy must be evil?
There is no other rpg system that I am aware of that uses those terms - '9th level' 'wizard' 'necromancy being automatically evil' 'Good, Evil, Neutral' 'Alignments' 'knowledge skill' 'ranks' - that I am aware of except for Dungeons and Dragons. Even if it isn't, the chance of it being DnD are incredibly high. Enough to go with the probability in terms of answering.
The issue being raised is the exact same in both versions of dungeons and dragons that use those terms - pathfinder and 3.5. It is slightly different in 4e, perhaps, but unlikely to be enough so that it changes an answer significantly.
Why is this question put on hold by a moderator (when users are upvoting it), instead of the tag being added? In the unlikely event of it being for some unrelated game system, as long as the question is not a duplicate (there's a couple it's close to, but none that address that specific issue), those answers can then be migrated to a new question created by one of the answerers if they wish to remain relevant. In the far more likely event that it is 3.5 DnD or Pathfinder, the question can be answered immediately.
If a user creates an account, asks a question, and then the question is closed by mod due to an incredibly minor nitpick, how likely are they to keep using the site? Probably: Not Very.
How likely are they to keep using the site if someone modifies their question with clearly stated best intentions, and it gets answers? Probably: Much more likely.
It's bad for the site adding users - it creates a culture of nitpicking rather than sharing information - and it's just rude. It's a classic perfectionist behaviour and almost completely negative to shoot someone down for a minor fault instead of ignoring or repairing it and addressing the broader thrust of the issue.
So why is this occurring? I see this happen a lot, this is just an especially egregrious example. If a question can be fixed to be something useful, it should - why shouldn't it?
This is literally a question of adding a single tag or working out that obviously the system being used is 3.5 or pathfinder, and the answer is the same in both.
'Why do you think putting a question on hold is bad?'
People can't answer it, it falls off the front page, the user feels chastised, and often if they come back a while later and update the question not enough people will look at an 'on hold' question to bother voting to reopen.
For someone with little investment in the site, why would they persevere? It probably takes less effort to simply ask the question somewhere else - and so they will.
And rpg.se has one less useful answered question, and one less user.
'This is irrelevant, as we can't fix it, only the OP knows the system'
To highest accuracy, sure. But there is a very easy guess as to the system, because he uses LOTS of rules terms from one of two - pathfinder or dnd 3.5. They are also the most asked about systems on the site, by a lot. And the terms he used don't appear in any other single RPG I am aware of - and that is a lot of RPGs.
So it can be fixed, to an acceptable degree of accuracy, and from there answered. There are a lot of questions that get put on hold that are like this. Some of them are questions never asked before or since on the site, that could have useful information in the answers.
So some questions are on hold, surely people don't care that much
When a question is closed, there is usually a bunch of comments saying 'your question is wrong' - sometimes with advice on how to fix it, sometimes not. To someone who asked that question, that is going to be read as a bunch of people saying 'you suck' - a crowd shouting them down. Worse, when a question is put on hold it also often accumulates downvotes - even if the issue is fixable - leading to further 'I logged onto the site, asked a question, and got shouted at and told I suck - i'm leaving'.
A question being put on hold seems to often be confused for a question being a bad question. Add the behaviour of bandwagonning and you end up with a number of downvotes that I am at a loss to explain.
Something which exacerbates this: Mods deleting comments suggesting re-opening the question
The few times I have voted to reopen a question, and then commented with why I voted to reopen a question, that comment has usually been deleted. So have any other comments regarding re-opening. So the user comes back to their question, finds no answers, a little official box saying their question is on hold because they suck, and a bunch of comments saying they suck, and often, a big '-5' next to their question.
Is that an incentive to fix it? No. Only negative feedback = poor response in low engagement activities like contributing to a website for the first time. This is a terrible way to greet new users, especially since the way the rules for asking questions is enforced is quite finicky, the help center is approximately 50,000 words not organized in a newbie-friendly manner, the 'tour' is extremely unclear about how harshly the rules are enforced and 'you're wrong' is pretty much the first time new users will have the opportunity to realize that this community has decided on very specific standards for whatever reason, and some will simply assume instead that it is full of assholes.
Which, to be fair, working from the information they have been handed - intensely negative response for unclear reasons - is not an unreasonable assumption.
