Why is this community so harsh?

Question

Today, I've seen this question about a person, having a problem which occurs at his or her private life and workplace: Becoming more social in life and at workplace.

It looks like the author's workplace is completely different than his or her private life, causing some issues the author wants to address.

As I had similar experiences, I decided to help the author, asked some more information and within those questions, added some first advice (like participating in regular daytime breaks, lunch breaks, ...).

The reaction of the rest of the community is extremely harsh:

• The question gets closed, as if the question were off-topic. However, as I have experienced something similar, I know for a fact that the issue can be quite on-topic.
• My answer received some downvotes. (This is not so bad)
• My answer got "deleted" and so-called converted into a comment, which is even not true: there is no comment, even resembling to my answer.
• As I tried to "undelete" my deleted answer, I got the reaction that the deletion was done by a moderator. A MODERATOR??? Look: I can very well understand that insulting, offensive, condescending, ... answers got deleted by moderators, but this???

As a reminder: the first sentence in the welcome page mentions:

The Workplace Stack Exchange is a question and answer site about the workplace and other career-related topics.

This is clearly the case here, so why being so harsh?

Answer 1

The question gets closed, as if the question were off-topic. However, as I have experienced something similar, I know for a fact that the issue can be quite on-topic.

While I think there probably is an on-topic question in general I do think it would benefit greatly from more information from the OP and the community voted to close the question - including the OP, and I'm reluctant to overrule the community in this case.

My answer got "deleted" and so-called converted into a comment, which is even not true: there is no comment, even resembling to my answer.

I'm not the moderator who deleted your answer - but I can see the sequence of events. A "Not an answer" flag was raised on it and the moderator accepted that flag and converted it to a comment on the question here. I expect they accepted the flag because your answer wasn't an answer to the question - instead it was a series of questions seeking clarification for the OP, which is what comments are for so it was converted to that. Like I say, I didn't do it but I would have done the same had it been me responding to the flag.

Answer 2

I converted your answer to a comment because it didn't answer the question. Instead it appeared to be posing several questions asking the OP for clarification and background information.

I don't feel my action was harsh in any way, it was the appropriate action in the circumstances.

If you have some useful insights to the question I invite you to write another in answer format.

Answer 3

I almost flagged your answer as "not an answer". It was a list of questions and I wasn't sure if you were asking for more clarification from the OP, or trying to answer the questions by asking prompting questions?

If you were trying to actually answer, I would rephrase it to make it clearer it is an answer. For example, instead of:

Were you social in primary school? - Were you social in secondary school? - Were you social during higher education? - Why do you want to be social now?

Something like:

Were you social in primary school? - Were you social in secondary school? - Were you social during higher education? - Why do you want to be social now? Use the answer to this to motivate yourself to take part in more social activities.

I think the latter tells the OP what they can do with the questions. Obviously you would change it to what you think they can do with the answer (not what I've guessed). The questions on their own don't really say that.