2k views

Non-experts closing questions

I have recently noticed what, to me, is a pretty irking trend in the tag I contribute to most often (algebraic geometry). It seems to me that there is a contingent of 'serial closers' who insist on ...
7k views

Enforcement of Quality Standards

Math SE has a long-standing policy regarding what constitutes a Good Question. The policy is intended to ensure that the collection of questions and answers here is of high quality, is searchable, ...
455 views

Deleting questions with upvotes, or with upvoted answers.

Sometimes, poorly formulated questions contain enough information to answer them and, more importantly, for the community to find them interesting enough. Then I found that there is a race between ...
2k views

"Be nice" vs. summarily closing questions for being too naive or "frustrating"

I am puzzled by many questions being increasingly frequently closed as "off-topic", for reasons that are not immediately apparent. Below are a couple of random examples from the past day alone. ...
1k views

A feature requested for the purpose of avoiding unintentional newbie-biting

It is not unusual that a newbie posts a question that is obviously about mathematics and it is closed with a notice that says closed as off-topic and then down below that: "This question is ...
340 views

Should this question have been closed?

I am scratching my head trying to figure out why this question was closed as "too broad." The OP was asking for a book on probability theory, and he or she listed the topics which, ideally, such a ...
286 views

Are basic questions welcome here?

I asked a question yesterday about something that turned out to be an error in my understanding of the Quadratic Formula and radicals. I am taking Algebra I, far inferior to the majority of users on ...
3k views

Is it a "rule" of Math Stack Exchange that when asking a question, it's **never** good just to state the question?

I recently asked the following question, and within 3 minutes it got 2 downvotes: Is there a set $A \subset [0,1]$ such that both $A$ and $[0,1] \setminus A$ intersect every positive-measure set? (...