Here is one other possible reason why your question might have got down voted: Soft questions are not considered like other questions, they are kind of special gray area in the scope that are treated differently by people from technical questions. Many users think they should be infrequent. So there are higher expectations from a soft question and also _an author of a soft question_. In particular many don't like new users asking soft questions for various reasons that I won't get into here. If you are a new user who have not asked/answered enough (which is subjective) good technical questions and you ask a soft question which is not exceptionally good then it is likely that your question will get down voted and closed. ps: I am simply explaining a possible reason, not expressing agreement/disagreement.