What was so bad about this question?

Question

The following question:

• What are the differences between "bekommen", "erhalten", "entgegennehmen", "empfangen", "besorgen" and "kriegen"?

was not only closed as NARQ but also receievd 4 downvotes at present, which makes it one of the most downvoted questions here.

The question was not really brilliant as it lacked a context to resolve possible issues on translation from English or a dictionary entry. Still, I feel it was not that bad. It could have easily be salvaged by adding some context. It even has a good and upvoted answer.

Other than a snappy comment

"Aus 6 Begriffen kann man 21 Paare bilden - sollen wir die alle gegenüberstellen? Welche Unklarheiten hinterlässt die Konsultation eines Wörterbuchs?"

no effort was taken to salvage this question.

What did we want to say with closing and downvoting? Are a beginner's questions no longer welcome here? Will the site survive after we had chased off all people that actually try to contribute by asking?

related:

• Is it welcome/tolerated to ask very beginner questions here?
• Does careless voting or non-voting damage this site?

Answer 1

The question ran afoul of both written and unwritten rules about posting.

Written:

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

Unwritten:

We expect askers to do a minimal amount of research before posting a question here.

In this case, consulting a paper or online dictionary to look up the definitions and English equivalents for each of these terms. Possibly that minimal research would have sufficed and the question would have been moot.

But what if that research had turned up an inconsistency? What if a reputable dictionary had given the exact same English "equivalents" for two or more German terms? Now that would have been interesting! For example, it could have sparked a lively discussion about congruency (or not) of the semantic fields covered by these words in German and English, perhaps coupled with a review of how these differences came about historically.

Answer 2

I just googled besorgen vs erhalten, received the question in question as the first google result, clicked on it, thus visiting the German SE site for the very first time, and found exactly the answer I was looking for.

In short, I was delighted. But I was also told that this was "not a real question".

So I was simultaneously impressed with the Stack Exchange concept (of which I'm already a huge fan), and annoyed by the SE "super users" who always seem more willing to close a flawed but promising question than to improve it. This pattern is all too common on SE, as has been discussed ad nauseam, in various settings.

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I'd also like to defend the general concept of word comparison questions for foreign language SE sites. I think such word comparison questions can be extremely useful and are maybe even one of the primary ways a foreign language SE can help a language learner.

Here's an example:

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I'm currently learning German. I'm using no fewer than three different dictionary resources, and have come across multiple verbs that are all defined very, very similarly: erhalten, bekommen, besorgen, kriegen, and empfangen.

These words are defined across my multiple dictionaries with some combination of the following translations: to obtain, to receive, to accept, to acquire, to take, to get.

But here's the problem: each dictionary uses a different subset combination of these translations for each word. So it's virtually impossible for me to discern the subtle differences between these words using a dictionary alone. This is exactly where a foreign language SE site should be useful.

I should be able to turn to the corresponding foreign language SE site to find help teasing out the subtle differences between these words by asking a word comparison question. This is the kind of information that one will never find in a dictionary, but is perfectly suited to SE. @uncovery's answer to the question in question was exactly the kind of answer I was looking for and is a great example of how helpful answers to word comparison questions can be.

Any kind of snappy check the dictionary, dufus answer to a question of this kind is ineffectual and annoying.

Answer 3

The list of words (verbs) in the question seemed to be "random." I can see a beginner reasonably confusing "bekommen" and "behalten." (In her auto biography, Maria von Trapp related an amusing story of the confusion a GERMAN speaker created when trying to use their "false friend" English equivalents, become and behold.)

I can see grounds for confusion between "entgegennehmen" and "emfangen." Again these words might be similar enough to the "untrained" (foreign) eye for one to mix them up.

I have been known to confuse "verdachtig," and "verdachten" which do not exist in German, with the correct word "verdächtigen." Not all of these can be found in the dictionary, because two of these forms don't exist. That might be a typical "foreigner" problem that the site is equipped to address. What is the difference between "verdachten" and "vermuten"? At least I knew enough to "mix up" word forms.

But the more words the above questioner adds to the mix, the harder it is to believe that mere confusion is at work. From the apparent look of it (to someone who is learning himself), it seems that the learner is just throwing out a laundry list of German words without even trying to sort them out in his own mind.

Thus, it seems that the questioner has crossed the line between mere "confusion" between a few choices and asking people to translate large number of words. And "lists" are something we aren't supposed to have to deal with on this site. Moreover, the questioner didn't provide a context for why these words were chosen, so that we can't reconstruct his thinking. These are probably the reasons why the question was considered "bad."

Answer 4

Libuz could have reacted in the comment section or by editing his question. He didn't, so maybe he wasn't too much interested in the question. Which fit's to the kind of question which looks like "Do some work and vote me up".