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This question is on +15 at the time of writing:

Is someone able to hack my Facebook account knowing my Dynamic IP, PPPoE and mask?

To me this seems a pretty lame question. Ok, it may be on-topic, non-opinionated, and it certainly isn't too broad. But it just seems - to me at least - an uninteresting question.

What seems to have happened is that it's got a few initial upvotes, then hit Hot network questions, and then got a bunch more. So why did it get those initial upvotes? Is this the kind of question people on this site really want to see?

For comparison this question had no upvotes, at least until I upvoted it just now, and I think it is a much more interesting question:

Are phone apps vulnerable to XSS or CSRF? (Webview, Phonegap, chrometab)

Perhaps this simply reflects what people want to discuss on the site. But I think the problem is that the people who are Infosec Professionals are not voting enough. If you are a professional, upvote professional questions more, and help make this site be something that is actually interesting, rather than a continual rehash of beginner questions.

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    Frankly, I was going to post my answer as a comment and vote to close, but decided that my comment was a valid answer, despite the non-professional nature of the question. I did not expect the flood of interest. – schroeder♦ Jun 8 '15 at 17:18
  • @schroeder - your answer seems totally fair to me. It's funny how you try to help some guy out with a basic question, then the question goes viral, and people start nit picking your answer. Well, it's the internet, anything goes :-) BTW, congrats on hitting 20k, are the extra mod tools interesting? – paj28 Jun 8 '15 at 22:51
  • Nothing big except being able to edit tag wikis without approval. – schroeder♦ Jun 8 '15 at 23:04
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    Similar to my question here: Are the wrong questions and answers getting too many upvotes? – SilverlightFox Jun 10 '15 at 10:43
  • I actually don't see what's wrong with this question. – user541686 Jun 15 '15 at 18:31
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Questions that are understandable to a broader audience, and in an area where many could have an opinion, are difficult once they get on the Hot Network Questions list.

I'd definitely encourage security professionals to vote early (and both up and downvotes are valuable here to help sort questions) but also to flag up questions which appear to be behaving oddly - as mods can step in and protect if necessary. Also flagging as duplicate where possible helps us - many of the worst beginner questions already have a good canonical answer on the site.

I don't think we necessarily have to be rigid around sorting into 'professional' or 'amateur', though, as we can have very good basic questions from beginners

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    Regarding your first paragraph, I suppose this is what is nicely called bikeshedding... – WhiteWinterWolf Jun 9 '15 at 8:21
  • Yes - I couldn't remember the term - exactly right – Rory Alsop♦ Jun 9 '15 at 8:36
  • @WhiteWinterWolf - you're right on the money with "bikeshedding". I guess I just need to roll with it, just seems a shame that there's a lot of interesting discussion that doesn't get the attention it deserves. – paj28 Jun 9 '15 at 10:04
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You are right. Personally I even asked a question about that user: Will my profile be suspended if I upvote a (almost) daily active user? (without mentioning him explicitly).

The problem is that I saw a highly reputed member commenting him one day something like this: Just stay there, we are going to dispatch a team to answer to all your questions That was rude and unprofessional. The questions of that user are so interesting in that a user can learn just by reading them. So those are, sometimes, the sad reactions of professionals towards each others.

As for amateur questions they are not necessarily uninteresting.

Few hours ago, this question from a quite new member has been asked: pubring.gpg and pubring.gpg~ at install - why?. As you can see, it is a very interesting. I personally was not able to answer him and the question remained 2 hours before getting an answer. I upvoted both the question and its answer.

Also questions about a subject you know deeply may sound uninteresting for you personally, but there are other members who may wait to see answers to them.

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Hmm, what do you think upvotes do or should mean? I think what they DO mean is simply, "A lot of people thought this was an interesting question." As people are not expected to say why they thought a question was interesting, someone could upvote because they had the same issue or problem, because they think the question is puzzling or interesting or amusing, or for many other possible reasons.

Frankly, I don't see why you care that a question got "too many votes". So what? I don't see how this will harm the value of the site in any way. Are your feelings are hurt because your question got fewer upvotes than someone else's? :-) It might be intellectually amusing to wonder why a question that you thought would only be of interest to a tiny number of people got a lot of votes. If that's why you're asking, okay. I don't get it for this particular question either. But besides the abstract curiosity, who cares?

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