How does this SE handle questions that obviously have ulterior motives?

Question

Recently we saw a spate of questions ridiculing , deliberately misinterpreting and spreading false stories about Hindu deities, vAnGmaya and beliefs. All of them seem to have taken their cue from the likes of a certain contemporary anti-Hindu "preacher". They are energy-stealing and making visits to this SE tedious and unpalatable. They do not serve the purpose of expanding anyone's knowledge about Hinduism; they are not scholarly inquiries into theology or sincere dharmic investigations.

How should the SE treat such blatantly "anti-Hindu" questions? If the argument that this is not a site to promote Hinduism, the counter-argument is that neither is it a site to denigrate Hinduism nor extend false propaganda against Hinduism.

I would say they should be deleted immediately and with extreme prejudice.

Answer 1

Yes, recently we're getting some rude/offensive like questions which sounds targeting Hinduism. Sometimes they're intentional invasion.

System is working as intended: such questions have been heavily downvoted and users have been blocked from posting new questions. Also if a post gets sufficient flags it gets automatically deleted by system.

So, If you observe such spam or rude/offensive posts, downvote and flag them.

We've recently deleted the question flagged twice. If user considerably behaves rude/offensive in comments with others, she/he is subjected to suspension.

Answer 2

This meta Qn is quite valid and both the other answers are good. However, an important point is not yet defined:
"Which kind of Questions are considered containing 'ulterior motives'?"

If we keep this term undefined, then the day may come where Qn-s with genuine curiosity might also get deleted. Also, what if a user creates another ID or a different user asks a similar Qn in future? A deleted Qn makes a post untraceable and hence has more consequences than a deleted answer.

Here is a middle path:

• Edit the Qn to remove the offensive part (already suggested)
• Flag for moderator intervention if there is an edit war of reverting changes
• Moderator may temporarily lock the post for few hours, at an acceptable edit level
• If the user has a similar pattern, then Mods may optionally issue a warning using tools

A Qn should be deleted which has direct abuses, derogatory remarks or not related to the site in any way.

Answer 3

I would say they should be deleted immediately and with extreme prejudice.

Instead of deleting such questions they should be edited to remove all offensive content so it can be properly answered.

Here's a question which was heavily downvoted initially and the system deleted it even though another user @SwiftPushkar wrote a nice answer citing references:

Why Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 9 Chapter 14 insults women too much?

So one drawback of heavily downvoting and closing prejudicial questions (for which valid answers can be provided) is that some future user will ask the exact question in the same tone and we don't have the original one (with the answer) in the system anymore to close the latter one as a duplicate.

Given that this is primarily a Q & A site, I suggest users focus on answering the central part of question (like @SwiftPushkar did with this) instead of attacking the user in comments or flagging as 'opinion-based', 'abusive', 'offensive', etc.

As a reminder, you shouldn't flag a question as offensive simply because you alone find it offensive:

What makes something rude or abusive and when should I flag it?

Even if a post is a bad post for some reason or another, it is probably not rude or abusive. The rude or abusive flag (formerly known as offensive) is meant to be used only in extreme cases, like hate speech, abuse against people, or abuse of the community or system.

For example, if a user posts obscene images to the site, that should be flagged as rude or abusive. But if someone says something bad about your favorite technology, that probably doesn’t apply.

As a rule of thumb, if you can’t justify something being hate speech or abuse, you shouldn’t mark the post as rude or abusive. Instead, you should downvote the post.

Conclusion

If you don't like a prejudicial question:

• Edit it to make it less offensive or less opinion-based.

• If you are not up for it, you can simply downvote and move along. Leave answering to other interested users.

By trying to close or delete questions (irrespective of their biased nature), you are also denying other users a chance to write answers (with proper references) and earn reputation.