Well - you were slagging AOL pretty bad - I presume that is the issue.
Easy. Wrong forum. GQ is not the place for rants, or polls, and your OP was both.
Um, it was a request for technical guidance in switching ISPs. Am I not allowed to express an opinion in the body of a general question?
Like Ferrous said. There was no general question in your thread. At best, it was a poll. But it looked a lot like a rant to me.
Sorry lissener, it sounded mostly like a rant with a little tiny question thrown in at the end. It would have ended up in the Pit if it had been left open.
I’m asking for assistance in how to switch someone from AOL to another ISP in such a way as to maintain access to her old mail and her address book.
I’m unaware of any rule that says any GQ post that includes extraneous stuff–e.g. an opinion–will be summarily locked.
Nonetheless, let’s pretend there is such a rule: perhaps someone will suggest a rewording that will get my fucking question through manhattan’s bizarrely pissy standards today.
Anyone?
How about this?
Ya know - this kinda seems like a no brainer…
I don’t understand what the big deal is. You should have posted that thread in the Pit to begin with. It’s a wonderfully wicked and sarcastic rant. A lot of us (who share your feeliings about AOL) would have loved to contribute to such a thread.
So why not just re-post it, as is, in the Pit? Seriously. I could use a nice anti-AOL rant right now.
Yeah, I know, but what I’m saying is: does the inclusion of an opinionated introduction to my question rise to the level of actual fucking lockage?
I mean what’s the deal? Are you suggesting, Ferrous, that any other phrasing than the one you pulled from my last post is totally unacceptable in GD? I missed that memo.
actually, when I read it, I wasn’t really aware that you were asking any real question. Your ending (something like "has anyone gone through AOL rehabilitation) seemed like a continuation of the rest of the rant.
You’ve gotten some sincere, and good advice here, (from Ferrous) as to how to pose the question in a legitimate form to elicit an answer.
I think that a General Question has to be mainly a question. Yours was mainly a rant with a question as an after thought.
P.S. I don’t think there is any way to carry over her old mail and address book. I couldn’t find a way to do it when I switched from AOL. Best I could do is forward the old emails I wanted to keep to my new email account.
Everyone else–and I really do mean everyone–has identified your post as a rant. Do you think you might be missing something?
You can include opinions in a GQ, but if you refer to a company’s services as an “underworld” and suggest that users of those services need to be “rehabilitated”, then you’ve crossed the line, and that should be immediately obvious to anyone who isn’t being deliberately obstinate.
Yeah, that’s what I’m suggesting.
No, wait. That’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m being sarcastic, like I was up there when I showed you that you already know perfectly well how to phrase a General Question.
Look, man, you’re overreacting. Your closed OP did not read like a General Question. I’ll take your word for it that you meant it as one, but by itself, it reads like a rant, with a solicitation of opinions at the end.
Compare:
Could someone please give me instructions on how to fill out a 1040 form?
-vs-
Could someone please give me instructions on how to fill out a 1040 form to benefit those jack booted government thugs who have financially raped me and my family without remorse for no reason other than their own personal gain under the guise of providing for the general welfare of people they don’t even know and couldn’t care less about?
Yeah, fine, whatever, but surely DOZENS of such opinionated questions-as-rants are posted in GD every day. I mean, I haven’t counted or anything, but I certainly don’t think of the dry, adjective-free style that everyone here is promulgating as being the DEFAULT tone of GD.
So yeah, I know there was a rant imbedded in the question–I’ll even give you that it might be vice versa–but since when is there a zero-tolerance policy for lending a question a “tone” in GD?
Concurring with the rest, I’ll add:
The mere inclusion of a question, that has a factual answer, in GQ does not follow that a thread cannot be closed on other grounds.
Or, what Libertarian says.
Or, to put it simply:
-
Your post came across as a rant.
-
You finished off with:
“Is there anyone else out there who’s gone through AOL rehabilitation, and has maintained a successful recovery, who has any suggestions to help me with this?”
The “this” remains largely undefined. And since the focus of your OP was more on your friend’s predicament, I wouldn’t naturally conclude that you wanted an answer to :
“I’m asking for assistance in how to switch someone from AOL to another ISP in such a way as to maintain access to her old mail and her address book.”
He closed the thread. He didn’t rip your gentials from your body, pilfer your bank account, kick your dog.
Post the question as a question.
There isn’t a zero-tolerance policy. As you say, often there is some opinion expressed along with a GQ, and most of the time this is ignored. However, yours was at the extreme end of the spectum - almost all rant, with only a vague hint of a question (to my eyes) tacked on at the end. (Actually, like some others, I couldn’t even tell from your OP what the questions was supposed to be.)
Anyway, so what’s the BFD? It ain’t like having a thread lock is a major calamity. If you really want a respones, either re-post it as a straightforward question in GQ, solicit opinions on it in IMHO, or rant in the Pit.