When someone votes to close a question on any of various grounds other than "spam", it probably does not imply that the question was not posted in good faith. But when someone votes to close a question as "spam", that is an accusation. That happened in this case:

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/62786/logic-of-motivation

I am owed an explanation for the accusation.

I had posted a longer version of the question which was closed for reasons for which Pete L. Clark attempted to give a partial explanation. So I reposted with the material he found objectionable deleted. That was closed as "not a real question", and in my view that was a clumsy mistake at best, but _one_ of those voting to close called it "spam". As far as I can tell, that was done anonymously. Whoever did that should identify himself and explain. He owes me that. He is my debtor.

Apparently there is at least one person---Pete L. Clark---who still believes that there are objective criteria by which a person contemplating a posting to mathoverflow can assess whether the topic will be judged appropriate or closed. The published criteria are not followed, and the actual practice is generally better than if the published criteria were followed. The practice appears to be that mathoverflow is for topics appropriate for discussion among mathematicians. Except that sometimes we have these mob events where one person expresses an objection to something and then a bunch of people leap in with downvotes because they feel they have to do a certain number of those. Some remarks that Harry Gindi posted here seem to corroborate that, and the actual behavior seems not explainable otherwise. (Harry Gindi said, among other things, that he used to be in the habit of downvoting without consciously being able to explain why he did so.) So completely frivolous threads like the one on mathematical urban legends (maybe the question is less than completely frivolous, but some of the well-regarded answers can't claim that) are popular, while serious and substantial questions like the one I link to above are closed for emotional reasons.

I am not unaware that what I write above contains some things with which reasonable people can disagree. Most of it is there only because if I don't put it there, then people may ask about it. But no reasonable person will say that those who make accusations have no obligation to explain.

Why was I accused of spam?

Please remember:

1. most MathOverflow users aren't reading meta (this is a good thing!), and
2. people on the internet are wrong

I certainly agree that flagging as spam was inappropriate in this case; I'm less sure that flagging as spam should be interpreted as an accusation, so I don't actually think anyone is under any obligation. Much more importantly, however, I want to say that meta is an inappropriate forum for demanding explanations of particular (anonymous) people. See point 1) above.

I'm certainly happy to have a discussion here about improving the mechanisms by which we maintain consensus amongst the >3000 rep users on how voting to close should be done. I'm also happy to (via private email) entertain a request that the moderators ask whoever voted to close as spam to be more careful with their reasons.

Finally, remember that we don't have control over the available "reasons to close", and the current list is far from ideal for us, so there'll always be some inappropriate reasons.

I agree that explanation is needed. That was certainly not a spam. My guess would be that it was done by some lazy-thinking mathematician who either do not understand the question (which is of course cannot be a reason) or understand it as a pure philosophical one which has nothing to do with mathematics. In the second case he indicates his unawareness of recent developments in formal logic which is (at least) to a large extent connected with mathematics. So, in any case this his action does not reveal him in good light. That is why I do not think he will tell us the reason. However, it may be quite possible that the action was caused by emotional reaction to one of Your general statements from the first version of the question. Here I advise You to be more accurate. Instead of saying

"We are teaching intelligent people to hate math. Once the canons of the logic of motivation are understood, it will be seen clearly that our present conventional curriculum is illogical."

You should say "According to my expirience, MOST of us are teaching... I am sure that once the canons of the logic of motivation...". Such reformulations, to my view, are more accurate and may be discussed. You may try to save the question (if You want to) by being more accurate in motivations and by being more informative about formalization (e. g. some instructive examples?) You are talking about.

@Scott: he probably clicked on the "close" button when there are several close votes pending, and thus got to see what the vote breakdown between various close reasons are.

@sergei,

in that case, MathOverflow is only for some discussions! :-)

I'm mostly reiterating what Scott said, but I think it bears repeating: MO is a community moderated website. There is no other functional mode of operation we know of. There are several consequences of this fact, one of which is that one does not get to demand explanations of votes to close from individual users. The moderators take responsibility for fixing decisions if they were made in serious error, and you can demand explanations from them about why they took an action or did not. The community as a whole also takes a certain kind of responsibility, and on numerous occasions, enough people have been persuaded by meta discussion to reopen a question. But with particular (anonymous) users, that's just not how it works. If someone can't accept that state of affairs, then I don't think MathOverflow is the right website for them.

Also, as we've discussed before, the word "spam" is one which people use a variety of different ways. By the strictest definition, labeling anything that was written as an individual message by a human as spam is wrong; on the other hand I think for some people, the term has expanded to include any message they think is appropriate.

+1 Ryan. I surmise that what you describe in your first sentence is exactly what happened.