incorrect?"

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Sep 18, 2010 at 8:25	comment	added	Chandru1		I agree with Bill here. Even i was surprised as to why the question was closed. The OP needs a clarification and its our job to provide one. If this question was closed then why not the question which says that $5^{n}+n$ is never prime, which is based on computing, rather than some mind work.
Sep 17, 2010 at 14:56	comment	added	Bill Dubuque		@Akhil: The question is about the correctness of a proof. Such questions aren't off-topic here. Moreover, as I stressed above, one of the primary values of a site like this is that students have access to expertise to help them learn how to write good proofs - to learn what details are essential and must be included, and what details are trivial and may be omitted. Not every student has the same privileges as did you. They may not be able to learn such things elsewhere. Voting to close such topics may rob students of their only available access to expert advice. Think globally, not locally.
Sep 17, 2010 at 13:08	comment	added	Akhil Mathew		@Bill: The philosophy of discouraging questions that are bad even if they could admit a good answer is largely intended to discourage bad behavior from the OP: it's lazy to ask an overly vague question, and it's likely that the answers (however helpful) won't be useful to her. For instance, I don't like the question "What are you favorite theorems?" although I might certainly learn something interesting from it. For this particular question, the extent of a long debate alone makes it quite clear to me that it wasn't a mathematical discussion--or the issues would have been long resolved.
Sep 16, 2010 at 22:13	comment	added	Bill Dubuque		@Akhil (continued). Many people invested a lot of time effort attempting to explain these subtle matters. You invested one second of effort to click on close and stifle the entire discussion. Do you honestly think that is fair?
Sep 16, 2010 at 22:11	comment	added	Bill Dubuque		@Akhil: As for this topic, don't you think the participants should be the judge of whether or not they have "already explained their postions quite amply"? There may have well been others - that like I - were planning to compose a thoughtful reply when time permitted. I saw no "flamewar". I just reviewed the whole thread and I saw nothing heated at all. Yes, there were frustrations trying to get points across, but nothing remotely resembling a flamewar (perhaps you've never seen a real flamewar, e.g. on a usenet newsgroup). In fact progress was being made at the time the thread was closed.
Sep 16, 2010 at 22:02	comment	added	Bill Dubuque		@Akhil: Perhaps you should introspect a bit and consider the global ramifications of your "philosophy". The threads that you helped to close perhaps could have stimulated some student to go on to study one of these topics, perhaps leading to publications or thesis work. I've seen that happen many times in other math forums. Why take some action that forcefully prevents that possibility simply because of some subjective judegement about the quality of the phrasing of the question?
Sep 16, 2010 at 20:40	comment	added	Akhil Mathew		@Bill: I have explained why I voted to close that particular older one; it's a separate issue that reflects my philosophy (namely, that the possible existence of a good answer does not in itself justify a badly written question's being open). On this question, I think it is even more clear-cut, namely that both sides have already explained their positions quite amply, so closure will have no effect other than possibly damping a flamewar.
Sep 16, 2010 at 5:10	comment	added	Bill Dubuque		Lest you forget, the most recent other question you helped close on me was bit.ly/90vr4W which, as you can see from the many votes to my partial answer, proved interesting to many folks. I think it could have been much more helpful had I been able to finish it. But, alas, the question was quickly closed in the middle of editing my long answer (10 minutes after my first draft was posted). Now there's little motivation to finish it since, being closed, it will get little exposure. Nor did the associated meta thread bit.ly/99xW5N help get it reopened. That's quite frustrating.
Sep 16, 2010 at 4:03	comment	added	Bill Dubuque		@Akhil: I do appreciate your explanation even though I disagree. It is extremely frustrating to have worked so hard to try to explain certain points to others and then have the thread closed before I could post a long thoughtful reply. This is the third time that has happened here and it seems to be the same folks always closing these questions. Please, could you try to be a bit more open-minded in the future.
Sep 16, 2010 at 2:09	comment	added	Akhil Mathew		FWIW, @Bill, I wouldn't have accepted the proof either were I a grader. But I don't see how the thread was useful in any mathematical way, and I don't want this website to be characterized by these kinds of arguments. Also, this site is definitely more inclusive than Mathoverflow: notice that questions at (almost) any level are accepted.
Sep 15, 2010 at 22:45	comment	added	Bill Dubuque		I find it quite disturbing that it seems to be the same handful of people responsible for most of the closing votes - imposing their narrow views on the rest of the site. When the site first started a goal was to make it more inclusive than mathoverflow. Sadly it seems that quite the opposite has occurred.
Sep 15, 2010 at 21:39	history	answered	Akhil Mathew	CC BY-SA 2.5