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If you've read meta then you should be aware that we're well and truly fed up with people thinking that we have an obligation to explain down or close votes. We have no such obligation, either morally or due to site rules.
As most will know, I'm no fan of chat but when I did use it I was there to ask a question that was OT for the main site. This leads me to wonder, if chat isn't a place to ask questions, what is it for?
It's a nice enough page but it's just one more page newbies won't bother to read and the rest of us already know, or at least should know, how the site works.
Extending more latitude to those with "decent rep", which I suspect most of us do from time to time, can be a dangerous thing and needs to be done with the utmost discretion. It can have the adverse effect of creating an excusionist environment if we're not careful. The last thing we need is users saying things like "why is it OK for a high rep user to post it but it's not OK for me?"
I'm on Sf much less frequently these days and don't check the queue every day. There were 30 something in my queue at the time I looked and I didn't reach the question I was talking about before stopping, as it was early in the day and I wanted to keep some votes up my sleeve.
All of us at times need to ask questions about things that are new to us but how those questions are asked is everything. Any professional, in any field should show due diligence, which includes showing that they have taken serious steps to help themselves, rather than just being lazy and expecting others to do the work for them. Anyone just starting in the field that does show due diligence will always be welcome on SF. Conversely, those that fail to show due diligence will likely see their questions closed, or at least downvoted, regardless of how many years of experience they have.
