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Does anyone else notice this? Someone will ask a question that demonstrates they have a certain level of mathematical experience, and then their question is answered at a level that is unlikely helpful to them.

When asking a question, should there be a place to indicate that you are an undergrad or in high school? And maybe what text you are using?

Or maybe questions should be tagged with a 'learning' tag? Where a poster would then be guided more?

Also, 'easy' questions tend to get a lot of answers but all with the same information...shouldn't people be editing other answers? Rather than reposting the same conclusions? Maybe when someone posts an answer it should also notify them of activity in the question since they started their post.

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    $\begingroup$ There are two things about this: the first is that often the background is omitted and the answerer needs to "guess" the level from the text; the second is that the problem can be answered in a higher level and help other people too. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Jun 3, 2012 at 16:45
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    $\begingroup$ See also the question How general should an answer be? $\endgroup$
    – Bill Dubuque
    Jun 3, 2012 at 20:57
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    $\begingroup$ I am comfortable if there is at least one answer that is level-appropriate. $\endgroup$
    – André Nicolas
    Jun 4, 2012 at 3:37
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    $\begingroup$ @Andre I agree with you completely. However when a very short question is posted it may be impossible to guess the correct level. Later when I ask people for their mathematical background they are sometimes offended... $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Jun 4, 2012 at 8:23

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The goal of answers is not only to help the original poster; otherwise there'd be little reason to keep questions around after they've been answered. Answers can also help other people looking at the question, either while it's still on the front page or if they find the question via a search engine.

When asking a question, should there be a place to indicate that you are an undergrad or in high school? And maybe what text you are using?

Users should feel free to indicate as much about their background as they want. Being overly specific could make the answers less useful to a wider audience.

Maybe when someone posts an answer it should also notify them of activity in the question since they started their post.

This already happens.

Also, 'easy' questions tend to get a lot of answers but all with the same information...shouldn't people be editing other answers?

This is not optimal but also not a big deal, really. It's certainly better than none of the answers containing that information. Plus it is valuable to have different explanations of the same thing; an explanation that makes sense to one user may not make sense to another even though they may look like they contain the same information.

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    $\begingroup$ As an addendum: "should there be a place to indicate that you are an undergrad or in high school?" Yes, the place is the question body itself. A questioner is of course free not to make use of that available space. $\endgroup$
    – Willie Wong
    Jun 4, 2012 at 8:40

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