Why was this downvoted: 'Why was 'rite' assigned to the PIE root *re(i)-?'?

Question

Please find below the original post. I do not know whether the downvotes were affected by uUser 'bytebuster' 's criticism below, which seems unfair and too negative, because:

1. I replied to his earlier comment that my post 'looks like a homework with no own research attempt', which reply was not acknowledged.

2. it unreasonably exaggerates the meaning of negative scores. Although some of my questions have been downvoted once, the absence of justification by the downvoter implies nothing corrigible about my posts.

3. it evidences judgement of my question prejudiced by the identity of the user.

I truly desire to learn more about linguistics, and so hope for constructive criticism and help.

[Source:] I don't want to start a Meta discussion here, but OP has asked 100 questions, 61% of which has zero or negative score. To me, this alone is a big red flag indicating that something went wrong. Sorry.

rite (n.) [⟸] early 14c., from Latin ritus "religious observance or ceremony, custom, usage," perhaps from PIE root * re(i)- "to count, number" (cognates: Greek arithmos "number," Old English rim "number;" see read (v.)).

Please expose and explain the hidden, missing semantic drifts and links. What metaphors or key ideas explain and overlie the semantic drifts, between the PIE root and the meaning of 'ceremony'?

Answer 1

The question does not show any evidence of having attempted to answer the question on your own. Instead, you point to somebody's conjecture about a possible relationship, and throw your hands up as though the entire answer were written in Mycenaean Greek. At the very least, you could extract a little bit of knowledge and make the question more specific, rather than invoking the generic formula "Please expose and explain the hidden, missing semantic drifts and links. What metaphors or key ideas explain and overlie the semantic drifts, between X and Y". For instance, you could ask something like "how could the meaning 'count' change into the meaning 'custom'?". But the first thing to be done is do the relevant background research, so that you ask the right question. One thing you could do is looked up the root in Walde-Pokorny to see what the semantic range is throughout Indo-European. If you had done that, I am certain you would have asked a totally different question.