Three strike rule to using MathJax

Question

I believe one problem with math.stackexchange is the lack of discipline by newer users when it comes to using MathJax. Let me elaborate.

Much too often, one can see a question posted by a user that is completely unreadable. The user simply writes his equations inline and waits for some magical fairy to come and make the question "look nice". In my view, too many resources are being spent on editing formulas in MathJax instead of actually answering the questions.

I know what the counterargument is: there are a lot of new users in math.stackexchange, users that the community wants to accept and help them grow. Many of them will eventually become useful to the site and we do not wish to scare them away by punishing them for not using MathJax. Therefore, I believe the problem would be some sort of three (or $n$) strike rule.

The rule is as follows: the first time a user publishes an "ugly" question, the question is flagged as "not using MathJax" and the user is politely but firmly directed to the MathJax help page. He is also told that in order to ask questions on this site, he is expected to know how to use MathJax. Then, if the user continues to use ugly formatting, he gets warned every time this is done, up to some number of strikes, where he is either banned or just starts to lose reputation.

Answer 1

This is supposed to be an all-purpose math site, and obviously not everyone in the world who has a math question knows how to use latex. Although learning latex is not so very hard, it is not trivial either, and assuming that people must have this skill in order to get continued service seems like a clear violation of the intended scope of the site.

Also, there are magical fairies -- i.e., other users -- who will come along and improve the formatting of the questions if need be. For any given question, within a few minutes someone will do this and spend only a few minutes on it, whereas someone who doesn't know anything about latex would find it much harder -- especially if they have no prior programming experience and an unsophisticated mathematical background. By the latter, I mean e.g.: I teach freshman calculus and we use a certain online homework system. Students complain a lot at first that the system does not accept their correct answers. I have to be patient with them and ask them to understand that while anything is possible, it is most likely that (their answer is either incorrect, or) their answer is being incorrectly entered, e.g. with the use of parentheses, mistaken ideas about syntax of functions, and so forth. It takes undergraduates at my university a few weeks to figure out how to be able to enter their correct answers correctly most of the time. Writing latex correctly is harder than this: it would be too hard for many users of this site to learn in the amount of time necessary to get a timely answer to their question.

Answer 2

Overview

It is unreasonable to ban or suspend user accounts on the basis that the person writing the question does not know much $\LaTeX$ or $\mathcal{MathJax}$.

I recommend that people be allowed to write Unicode characters inside of their mathematical formulas.

On the technical side, The Math Stack Exchange already allows Unicode characters.

However, from a human stand-point, human beings tend to vote to close all questions containing Unicode characters.

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An Example of a question which Uses $\mathcal{MathJax}$

We define an outline to be $PS \subseteq \mathbb{R}^{2}$ such that $\forall p \in PS$ and $\forall d \in \mathbb{R}$ if $d > 0$ then there are exactly two points $p_{1}, p_{2} \in PS$ such that the straight-line distance between $p_{1}$ and $p_{2}$ is exactly equal to distance $d$.

How would you generalize this definition to three dimensional space?

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An Example of a Question Uses Unicode Characters Instead of $\mathcal{MathJax}$

We define an outline to be PS ⊆ R² such that ∀ p ∈ PS and ∀ d ∈ ℝ if d > 0 then there are exactly two points p₁, p₂ ∈ PS such that the straight-line distance between p₁ and p₂ is exactly equal to distance d.

How would you generalize this definition to three dimensional space?

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The Example of a Question Uses Unicode Characters Instead of $\mathcal{MathJax}$ would be Closed or Deleted by Some People Because most moderators of math stackexchange beleive that nobody should be allowed to read or answer questions they would not answer themselves.

Most moderators of this site are a bit like a number theorist deleting all questions about graph theory, because that particular number theorist does not like graph theory.

Or... perhaps... we can swap the names of the job titles.

Maybe a graph theorist deletes all questions about number theory because that particular graph theorist dislikes number theory.

Years ago, a moderator left a comment saying he or she would ban me from the site unless I switched to $\LaTeX$ or $\mathcal{MathJax}$ code for writing mathematical formulas.

Of course, if you force people who have never used $\LaTeX$ or $\mathcal{MathJax}$ to use $\LaTeX$ or $\mathcal{MathJax}$, then those people will make mistakes.

I recommend that moderators be told to not close, suspend, and/or ban user accounts for typing the Unicode character ∈ instead of typing \in.

It is possible to have valid questions about mathematics, but not have any skills in writing $\mathcal{MathJax}$ and $\LaTeX$.

As such, I recommend not closing any questions written with Unicode characters such as ∈ instead of MathJax.