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.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
21 votes
0 answers
584 views

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 ...
Aloizio Macedo's user avatar
  • 34.2k
20 votes
5 answers
869 views

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 ...
user99680's user avatar
  • 6,708
20 votes
2 answers
1k views

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 ...
Anne Aunyme's user avatar
20 votes
7 answers
1k views

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 ...
Theo Bendit's user avatar
  • 50.8k
20 votes
2 answers
2k views

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 ...
Lucian's user avatar
  • 48.3k
20 votes
4 answers
998 views

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, ...
HSN's user avatar
  • 2,744
20 votes
3 answers
646 views

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 ...
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
19 votes
1 answer
518 views

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 ...
dxiv's user avatar
  • 76.5k
19 votes
0 answers
138 views

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 ...
wece's user avatar
  • 2,732
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 ...
Andrew Li's user avatar
  • 4,554
18 votes
1 answer
679 views

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 ...
user avatar
18 votes
1 answer
683 views

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 ...
Aloizio Macedo's user avatar
  • 34.2k
18 votes
2 answers
952 views

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 ...
vociferous_rutabaga's user avatar
18 votes
2 answers
614 views

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 ...
Alberto Takase's user avatar
18 votes
1 answer
858 views

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 ...
lioness99a's user avatar
  • 4,943
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 ...
Ripstein's user avatar
  • 590
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 ...
MJD's user avatar
  • 65.4k
18 votes
0 answers
942 views

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 $l$ ...
user182601's user avatar
17 votes
2 answers
852 views

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 ...
Ron Gordon's user avatar
  • 138k
16 votes
2 answers
869 views

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 ...
user avatar
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 ...
Aditya Hase's user avatar
  • 8,781
16 votes
3 answers
623 views

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? ...
user avatar
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?
suomynonA's user avatar
  • 6,895
16 votes
1 answer
404 views

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 ...
tired's user avatar
  • 12.3k
16 votes
3 answers
385 views

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; ...
user avatar
16 votes
1 answer
333 views

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 ...
user avatar
16 votes
2 answers
786 views

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 ...
Stella Biderman's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
629 views

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 ...
TMM's user avatar
  • 9,976
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 ...
Simply Beautiful Art's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
322 views

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 ...
Peter Woolfitt's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
766 views

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 ...
yoshi's user avatar
  • 3,509
15 votes
1 answer
411 views

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 "...
BlackAdder's user avatar
  • 4,029
14 votes
1 answer
818 views

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 ...
smackcrane's user avatar
  • 3,211
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 ...
Tengu's user avatar
  • 1,078
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 ...
Kushal Bhuyan's user avatar
14 votes
1 answer
312 views

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 ...
user avatar
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 ...
quartermind's user avatar
14 votes
0 answers
383 views

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 ...
mathreadler's user avatar
  • 25.8k
13 votes
5 answers
1k views

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 ...
gen-ℤ ready to perish's user avatar
13 votes
1 answer
248 views

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'...
Hanno's user avatar
  • 6,302
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 ...
hmakholm left over Monica's user avatar
13 votes
0 answers
407 views

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. ...
19aksh's user avatar
  • 12.8k
12 votes
5 answers
1k views

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 ...
Zuriel's user avatar
  • 5,331
12 votes
7 answers
2k views

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?
Makoto Kato's user avatar
  • 42.6k
12 votes
2 answers
393 views

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 ...
Michael Albanese's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
461 views

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 ...
user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
1k views

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 ...
clathratus's user avatar
  • 17.2k
12 votes
1 answer
793 views

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 ...
Gottfried Helms's user avatar
12 votes
3 answers
2k views

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 ...
Code-Guru's user avatar
  • 2,176
12 votes
1 answer
407 views

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 ...
user avatar

1
2
3 4 5
7