Questions tagged [answers]
For questions about answers on the main site. Consider using the accepted-answer tag if the question is about an answer that has been accepted.
326
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Do we have a "How to write a good answer" post? If not, can we have one?
Today I suggested to a new user that the style of his answer was not very appropriate for MSE. In searching for links of suggestions on how to write a good answer, I did not find an authoritative ...
20
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5
answers
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Courtesy/Etiquette: Writing an Almost-Identical Answer just After the Previous.
I'm curious as to whether there is some implicit/explicit etiquette re writing an almost-identical answer just a few minutes after a previous one. I'm thinking about the issue in general, but the ...
20
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2
answers
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How should I (nicely) tell people they should answer my question rather than giving the answer in comments?
I know this isn't an issue specific with math.se, but this is one of the community where I feel like it is widespread.
Take as an example my last question. I am basically asking "Is the result X ...
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7
answers
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Should we discourage full solutions to questions that explicitly ask for a hint?
I've encountered several posts in the past that explicitly ask for a hint for their stated problem. It's not uncommon for these questions to gather full solutions for their problem, sometimes in their ...
20
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2
answers
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Proving that $e^\pi-\pi<20$ Without Using a Calculator
No, I did not mistake the meta for the main site. :-) I'm just curious how you would recommend to approach such utterly intractable questions. Apparently, simply answering them in the negative is not ...
20
votes
4
answers
998
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Answers to questions not asked in English
Recently, I stumbled upon this post, which was posted in Portuguese. When I asked the OP in a comment to restate the question in English, other posters told me that according to this post on Meta, ...
20
votes
3
answers
646
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People giving incorrect answers in the comments
This is extremely annoying that people give incorrect answers in the comments. I can't downvote comments, so I can't easily signal that the comment is wrong. If there are already several comments on ...
19
votes
1
answer
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Answer to deleted question shows as "deleted by *owner*"?
I happened to notice that this question which I had previously answered has been deleted. That's perfectly fine by me, and I don't mean to question the deletion itself in any way.
What I find odd is ...
19
votes
0
answers
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Hide comments to view the question
Is it possible to have a button hide comments (or something like that) in order to see the question when we write the answer?
When you write the answer it's often useful to see the question to have ...
18
votes
2
answers
798
views
What to do about extremely similar answers?
What should I do if I see a competing answer that is submitted around 10-15 minutes later with very similar or the exact same content just rephrased or missing/adding a few intermediary steps? I find ...
18
votes
1
answer
679
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Can an answer be confusing?
By answering the question Does $\sum_{n=1}^\infty\frac{1}{n}$ diverge using an argument of Cauchy sequence I received several downvotes (and of course my question isn't about the downvote but just to ...
18
votes
1
answer
683
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Specific Downvoting
DISCLAIMER: I understand that the consensus of the community about downvoting is that each one has its own personal reasons to downvote, and should not have to justify that.
That said, I recently ...
18
votes
2
answers
952
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What to do when other users answer low-quality questions?
This question is related to many I've seen on here about "low-quality posts," so I apologize in advance if it's an exact duplicate of one I haven't found, or simply too close to others. My question is ...
18
votes
2
answers
614
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Answering a question too late
I recently answered a question I later found to have been asked nearly 3 years ago. If interested the question is Constructing a family of sets. (EDIT: The answer I provided was not correct, but this ...
18
votes
1
answer
858
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Downvotes on answers to 'poor' questions
I posted an answer to this question. My answer received a downvote, and when I asked them to justify it, another user commented that they guessed it was "based on belief that no one should waste their ...
18
votes
3
answers
553
views
Easy questions: answers or clues?
I am quite new in the community, but I have noticed two different behaviours when someone asks an "easy" question:
Either the question is answered, which may be good since the explanation will help ...
18
votes
5
answers
792
views
What is the etiquette for reposting one's own answer?
At one point I wrote a fairly detailed explanation of why equivalence relations on a set and partitions of that set are essentially the same thing. The issue came up in a new question again. The new ...
18
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0
answers
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May I ask why my answer was deleted without explanation?
In Why do we believe the equation ax+by+c=0
represents a line?, I wrote this answer:
Let $A=\left(x_{A},y_{A}\right)$ and $B=\left(x_{B},y_{B}\right)$ be distinct points.
We define the line $l$ ...
17
votes
2
answers
852
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About posting identical answers to a question
I've been a fairly active member for about a month, and I first of all want to say that this is a terrific site for someone like me that loves to mess around with challenging problems for no reason ...
16
votes
2
answers
869
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Should I flag an answer if the answer is wrong?
I am referring to this flag I raised-
The answer should have been deleted, apart from being downvoted. For this purpose, couldn't I flag? These types of answers (from high rep. users) lower the ...
16
votes
2
answers
716
views
Is it okay to post solutions without using $\LaTeX$
Following question Now has two answers both written by same user, one of them without $\LaTeX$
Using an Integral to Solve for a Variable a
I've also commented about using $\LaTeX$ and I got ...
16
votes
3
answers
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Should close votes be used to answer questions?
I have noticed a user (won't name names) that close voted questions with the custom reason "this question is completely trivial: answer".
Should we write our answers in answers or in close votes? ...
16
votes
1
answer
754
views
Copy and pasting answers from comments
What is the general rule for copy and pasting and posting as answers the exact content of someone's comment? What is required? Credit? Making the post community wiki?
16
votes
1
answer
404
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How to handle answers which are only CAS output?
I'm quite uncomfortable with the fact that there are many answers by specific users (especially in the "integration"-tag where I spent most of my time here) which are clearly pure CAS output. On top ...
16
votes
3
answers
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What to do when an existing answer to one question answers another question?
I would like to answer this question with this answer.
Trying to post a cross-reference as an answer results in the answer being converted into a comment.
But thou shalt not answer in the comments; ...
16
votes
1
answer
333
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when is that a comment is better than an answer?
This is my first post on meta, so I hope to say something that makes sense.
I often see comments that if they had been posted as answers they could be acceptable ones. The problem I see in this is ...
16
votes
2
answers
786
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Handling answers that don't answer the question
Often times, I come across "answers" that are related to the question but don't answer the question that has actually been asked in the OP. Often times this occurs when the OP asks for an explanation ...
15
votes
3
answers
629
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Deleting your own answers
When should you delete your own answers? I'm not asking for only the case where your answer is wrong (which is discussed in this topic), but more generally, when it would be good practice to delete ...
15
votes
5
answers
585
views
Possible improvements of the "How to answer" page
I was looking over the How to answer help page, and upon reading it, I and a few others agreed that it was not as helpful as it could be. And so we came up with a list of things that might improve ...
15
votes
1
answer
322
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Post new answer or significantly edit old wrong answer?
Here's the situation I ran into:
I posted an answer to Maximum $C$ such that every shape in $\Bbb R^2$ with area $<C$ can be placed to avoid $\Bbb Z^2$ and it garnered a few upvotes before I ...
15
votes
1
answer
766
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1/2 of question answered by different people
In the question I posed here:
A characterization of Weak Convergence in $L^p$ spaces
I have a two way implication, one way was answered by one person, the other answered by another. I'd like to ...
15
votes
1
answer
411
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Why isn't there any option for favourite ANSWER? [duplicate]
I notice that there is no option of favourite answers. What I have to do now is to favourite the question containing the answer. I think that it is a little unfair that the question SEEMS to be "...
14
votes
1
answer
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Posting an answer as a comment
Related (possible duplicates):Dealing with answers in comments and What should one do when one's question has been answered in the comments?
I've seen this more than a couple times now: here is a ...
14
votes
1
answer
861
views
Can I ask the same question twice?
I asked a question but since it was very long, nobody answered me. I'm wondering if I should ask it again as a new question again (Of course I will make it much simpler than before) or should I just ...
14
votes
1
answer
458
views
Can we have a favorite star for answers?
It is just a thought. As we have a star to mark favorite a good question, can we similarly have a star to each answer so that a good answer can be marked as favorites by users. That way one can know ...
14
votes
1
answer
312
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Giving extra points for a great answer
A similar question was asked but was somewhat colored by the implication that the questioner wanted to "pay" for assistance.
But I was wondering if there is a mechanism to award bonus points for an ...
14
votes
1
answer
446
views
Answering my own new and more detailed question rather than an existing one
Recently I have posted this question:
Functions that preserve asymptotic equivalence.
I searched MSE and MO sites for related questions before asking, but didn't succeed, my bad. After few days, I ...
14
votes
0
answers
383
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Answers which are not quite answers, but still could be useful to stimulate learning.
Is there some way to treat faulty answers or ones which do not address the specific question, but which could be of merit. For instance something that is
related which could help the person creating ...
13
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5
answers
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User answering poor question while also voting to close
Context
Tonight I witnessed conduct from a reputable user that I find outrageous. I won’t name names, but as the individual’s identity could be determined by tracing my activity anyways, I’ll include ...
13
votes
1
answer
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Accepting one answer if several answers form a partition of a full answer
How would you attribute your acceptance tick if two or more good, but partial answers were given, i.e., none is complete, but their union is?
Do you have valuable experiences you'd like to share?
I'...
13
votes
1
answer
282
views
Grace period when a question is closed
Didn't there use to be a grace period of 5 minutes after a question was closed where answers could still be submitted, but where one can't start writing an answer? If there wasn't (and I have just ...
13
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0
answers
407
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Regarding - posting a negative comment to a question and answering the same.
We post comments to posts which lack effort, suggesting them to include their efforts(I agree with that) or informing them that the answer is trivial when they use a particular formula or method.
...
12
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5
answers
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Is it okay to give an answer with only "Yes" or "No" with no further details supporting the conclusion?
I came across this question and so far the answer with only three letters "Yes" received 50+ upvotes. The answer contains no details, shows no research effort and cites nothing; but it is well ...
12
votes
7
answers
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What's wrong with a user posting different and independent answers to a question?
When I posted different answers to a question, some people seemed to frown upon it.
Is $G/pG$ is a $p$-group?
12
votes
2
answers
393
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When should you add another answer instead of adding to your previous answer?
Suppose I give a solution to a problem in an answer and then later on I think of a different method to solve the same problem.
Should I edit my old answer and include the second method, or should ...
12
votes
1
answer
461
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Should there be an option to accept multiple answers?
The OP raises an important point here and I quote " i'd like to reward all of you because all answers are nice and helpful, but this is not possible".
This got me thinking, since for that question in ...
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1
answer
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Plagiarism in answers?
I recently saw this answer to a question in the integration tag. The answer has clearly been copied from this link, the infamous online integral calculator. There was nothing added to the answer, or ...
12
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1
answer
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Should this answer (such style of answers) be deleted?
I've just come across an answer § to a question on Ramanujan summation, which seems to me to be simply a long suada of sentences - even although the verbal content is mathematics terminology. There is ...
12
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3
answers
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Posting solutions to textbook exercises
I am fairly new to Stack Exchange, starting with stackoverflow.com. I added a math.stackexchange.com account to ask questions about my current self-study in Categorical Type Theory. Today, I posted a ...
12
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1
answer
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Can I post multiple answers for the sake of ease and clarity?
This is regarding the question: Is there a list of all typos in Hoffman and Kunze, Linear Algebra?
The problem is that MathJax renders extremely slowly after my answers reach a certain length. At ...