# Why this question was closed?

Why this was closed as "unclear what you're asking" ?

The comments indicates that all but two person could perfectly understand the question, and two persons even found the question to be interesting.

Shouldn't it be unclosed ?

• I can only speculate - possibly I shouldn't - but as I didn't partake in reviewing your question may be I'm that much more impartial. Linking to external material presses people's buttons here. Many like questions to be as self-contained as possible. It would probably make it clearer what you are looking for, if you described more verbosely why you liked that particular web page so much. Ideally so that somebody could answer without clicking. Not sure if fixing that would satisfy the close voters, but it would satisfy me. I'm all for explaining math ideas in ways not available in textbooks. – Jyrki Lahtonen Sep 28 '17 at 10:23
• @JyrkiLahtonen Yes, that's a good point, butt they should realize I wasn't linking to any random rickroll page, it's a page written by Fields medallist timothy gowers himself. – cdt Sep 28 '17 at 10:25
• Why not add that piece of information also :-) – Jyrki Lahtonen Sep 28 '17 at 10:27
• Yes, added, but I don't think that would do anything good. – cdt Sep 28 '17 at 10:37
• It may have been better to ask a question like "If it wasn't already known, how could I strike upon the idea of Y?" rather than, essentially, Where can I find something like X buy about Y?' – Antonio Vargas Sep 28 '17 at 11:05
• Off topic... Some people (especially inexperienced ones) may think it rude when their question is closed by users with names like "Professor Vector" and "Lord Shark". – GEdgar Sep 28 '17 at 11:28
• As you can see on the timeline, the edit pushed the post into the reopen review queue, but the result was 3 votes to leave closed. – Martin Sleziak Sep 28 '17 at 13:26
• @JyrkiLahtonen "Many like questions to be as self-contained as possible." I thought this was not only a preference of some users but an official recommendation on the site. Is it not? – Did Sep 28 '17 at 15:19
• @Did I use that phrase to pre-empt other voices from criticizing me from seeing my own opinions as official policies. And, opinions probably vary here as well as elsewhere. – Jyrki Lahtonen Sep 28 '17 at 15:23
• @GEdgar what precisely is the issue the names? – quid Sep 28 '17 at 18:01
• @quid ... Some users (especially new ones) may think that a fanciful name like "Lord Shark" is used to mock them. – GEdgar Sep 28 '17 at 20:30
• @GEdgar thank you for the clarification. I see the point now. (I am not sure I share it, but that's a separate matter.) – quid Sep 28 '17 at 22:10
• The OP clearly doesn't know what is quadratic reciprocity, to me the question deserves to be at least downvoted. – reuns Oct 10 '17 at 19:22

I'm going to try to answer it ( I wasn't one of the close votes), when you could use citation etc. in you posting you could be more specific about which part of the whole page ( or 12 pages if you copy the full text into wordpad and print preview) you want something like, instead of making a math community navigate to another site (or open another tab to view it) just to answer something that may be easy for them to answer with a quick quote like:

This, being a quadratic in u, can be solved. Using this value of u one obtains a cubic in y that can be completed'. This gives a solution of y. Then x can be worked out from y by solving a further quadratic.

though these appear in a different color on this meta area. Mathematics is a Science, and is very much based on definitions, and proper wording. In every day language we might say group, to mean a set of things. In math a group is a set, equipped with two binary operators, that follow the group axioms. One complaint in the comments is that anything and this are too broad ( there's also at least one typo that hasn't been fixed but that's not relevant right yet). This site uses MathJax to present mathematics, you could make all the equations on the page if needed. Also that question seems more of one about algorithms, and could have been tagged as such, and listed the steps of the algorithm given. That could have brought in a more appropriate audience to your question. So in short you want us to follow links like:

this

this

this

instead of being specific in your question about what you want specifically on this site itself. EDIT: another tag you could put the question under ( instead of what it has and along with algorithms is reference request)

• for those wondering the links are about the pigeonhole principle. – user451844 Oct 2 '17 at 14:01