Tag Info

CRUDE, as described in its description, is an incredibly helpful tool. There is nothing unhealthy about "feedback/discussion/requests of Close/Reopen/Undelete/Delete/Edit for questions and answers on Math SE". People are conflating what CRUDE actively is and what it is described to be, imho. For instance, the close queue is not appropriate to the handling ...

The site is faced with a content quality management problem$^1$. The number of questions outstrips the number of curators, so consequently the proportion of poor quality questions which live on grows ever more rapidly$^2$. Now, when a problem$^3$ and solutions exist, it is a simple matter to play the watchdog and complain about solutions you don't like. ...

I agree with much of what @user7530 has said, and I'd like to add a couple of points based on my observation of some behavior I have observed on this site. The following should not be seen as a justification if rudeness; there is none. But there are behaviors that also transcend the requirement to be nice, and rather than rudeness, I prefer to call it ...

I share the sentiment but disagree with this being classified as a violation of the code of conduct. Marriage equality is absent in most countries of the world and I found only six countries in which gender assignment at birth is not binary (the latter information was from 2013, much can have changed since.) At places where the law enforces ...

You say: I am asking because a downvote is a really easy way for me to communicate that something needs improvement,[...] and I understand that an explanation is better, but isn't a downvote better than nothing? This is mostly true, and basically the design-idea. However, it can lead to the following situation. "Alright. There is a problem with my ...

Everything in the second paragraph of Theoretical Economist's answer is true and important, and I could write a great deal about it from personal experience, including how it has severely affected my mathematical education. On the other hand, were it not for its unfortunate use of the inflammatory phase "liberal extremist nonsense", I would also agree with ...

For my part I will say the following. I don't really regret making those chat comments. I mean, I am not willing to apologize for them at the moment. But I do concede that I'm not at all proud of making them. The others have analyzed my state of mind while making those comments reasonably accurately. The one addition I will make is that: I didn't want to ...

I think this is a problem that we are ill-equipped to deal with, in that our actions (whatever they are) are unlikely to make a significant impact. The primary sources of these problems are professors, textbook authors, and practice problem websites, and while they produce these problems, we are going to get them on our site. I don't think we should ...

I was going to write just a comment, but there are several points to be made here so I decided to promote my 2 cents to an answer. My observations regarding CRUDE, the state of MSE, and this topic: Most people are in agreement that there is a problem with the average quality of a new question (the severity of the problem is subject to dispute); Some people ...

Let's just stick to common sense and not attempt to find all possible reasons to get offended when it is rather obvious that no offense has been meant. We have had enough of liberal extremist nonsense in this world recently (recall the Tim Hunt story, to mention just one) to drag it to the mathematical sites. The common politeness and respect to "alternative ...

It is absolutely not the position of the moderators to condone abusive behavior in chat. Chat is less formal than the main site, so there is, in practice, a bit more room for heated discussion there (much like on meta). Still, everything must remain reasonably civil. That being said, I do not agree that these comments are unfair or abusive. The users are ...

Is CRUDE healthy? You mean right now!? I dunno. Heck, I don't even know when right now is! Perhaps the more important question is Can CRUDE be healthy? Certainly. Though it would probably be more healthy with a more diverse group of users taking part in it. That and the users involved must hold themselves to high standards, and remember that they are part ...

No, it's not. Cranks, nuts, newbies, PSQ-askers, PSQ-answerers, rep-farmers, donut-eaters, people making wrong assertions. How can we make them stop doing those things, or get them to leave? A self-appointed panel of inquisitors should do the trick. If you are unjustly mentioned as a person of interest in the court transcript, post here in meta.SE to ...

To quote the Code of Conduct (emphasis mine), We commit to enforcing and improving the Code of Conduct. It applies to everyone using Meta Stack Exchange and the Stack Exchange network, including our team, moderators, and anyone posting to Q&A sites or chat rooms. The code of conduct is clearly intended to be enforced in chat rooms. I would agree that,...

I can do no better than to quote Pere's answer in the Math Educator's Stack Exchange thread: The issue is not making problems about heterosexual married couples. The issues are: Implicitly making the assumption that all married couples are heterosexual. Making problems about heterosexual marriages but not about other kinds of couples. ...

A high proportion of questions posted here are homework questions that show minimal effort on the part of the OP, both in explaining/formatting the question, and in attacking the problem itself. I believe many of the regulars feel overwhelmed, and become exasperated (and for good reason) when the quality of a question is particularly poor. On the other hand,...

Basically, people get really offended by unexplained downvotes. If you explain a downvote, they tend to still be very offended, but they can at least argue with, harass, and retaliate against whoever downvoted them. They often do this if you explain a problem with their post without downvoting as well. To top it off, people will often feel bad and upvote ...

I've thought a fair amount about the issue of the interpretation of downvotes. It's easy to take the stance that it's just meant as an objective rating of usefulness, relevance, or agreement, depending on the community. There's nothing really wrong with this interpretation, but ultimately it probably doesn't track how most people feel about downvotes. For ...

The room CRUDE is relatively tightly overseen by per-site moderators. The activity that happens there has my full support, and if I am not all that active there myself, it is on the one hand for lack of time and since I believe in the principle that the site is community-moderated and thus to the extent possible users should do the moderation tasks. (This ...

I'm of the same line of thinking as the OP. Personally I try to use "They", "Them", and so on in my answers, and in everyday conversation. I think it's important not to assume roles (I saw a post on MSE about a farmer that repeatedly referred to "him"), and generally it isn't too hard to be gender neutral. HOWEVER, I do think that in historical problems ...

The incidence of overly caustic comments seems to be relatively low from what I can gather (and then, it's often users with <2k rep posting these). I feel that it should suffice to call people out on their tone, with a comment along the lines of: @CausticCommenter Please mind your tone -- it is not MSE's primary goal to scare away new users. One ...