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Since this will be inevitable:
Vote this up if you think Context Missing (see definition below) should be among our "Off topic" reasons. (And down if you think otherwise.)
(Please vote on the idea of having a listing such as this, and not on the exact phrasing I used below. If you think the listing is poorly phrased, you can comment below with ...
37
It should be neither closed nor downvoted, if anything because both are quite contrary to the whole spirit of the mathematical endeavor!
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The standard reference for this is "Good Subjective, Bad Subjective".
Note that when we compare the two description you quoted there remains a gap.
On the one end of the spectrum there are those questions whose answers "[can] be objectively evaluated as correct or incorrect," these are not soft questions. On the other end of the spectrum there are those ...
30
I propose that we just be more sincere and direct about the reason for closure; why wouldn't we introduce 'not enough/too little research effort shown - please check whether you have included your own work'? Since this is basically what most people are trying to say when voting for closure in such cases, I think this (or any formulation similar to this one) ...
26
For the specific question, the context seems completely clear. The question reads:
How deep is the liquid in a half-full hemisphere?
I have a baking recipe that calls for 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract, but I only have a 1 tsp measuring spoon available, since the dishwasher is running. The measuring spoon is very nearly a perfect hemisphere.
My question is, to ...
25
This is a difficult issue, but I basically disagree with your conclusions in these two cases. Sporadic thoughts:
I didn't vote to put either of those questions on hold even though I saw them in the queue. I was following my private policy of keeping non-trivial questions open. If I had noticed that the first had a contest-math tag, I would have voted to put ...
25
Your Comment contained a link to an older Question. Although this Question was not the final target chosen by voting to close-as-duplicate, someone may have voted to consider that target the duplicate, or the system may have identified that link as a duplicate of the target that was eventually chosen.
What is known is that when a vote to close-as-...
24
The question you mentioned should be closed. The argument given for closing it is arguably prone to cause confusion and dissent though.
In our guidelines How to ask a good question. it is mentioned that some context should be provided.
Some consider lack of context as a reason to close. There is a community specific close reason for just this:
Missing ...
22
Votes do not just accumulate, they can "age away" and how quickly actually depends a bit on the number of views.
Moreover, questions with many views often are disproportionately viewed by users that cannot vote to close anyway.
Finally, if they are closed and many disagree they are also reopened quickly.
That said, for votes to delete the score of ...
21
I think there are two separate issues:
The complaint about your edit is of course unsubstantiated. If you face such a situation, please feel free to flag. (Flagging the post can be preferable to flagging in chat, as chat flags go to all network mods, while post flags stay on the site.) I was in the chat room when the comment was posted but had not (yet) ...
20
Complementing Alexander's answer, a close reason of "lack of research effort" is, in my opinion, intrinsically bad for multiple reasons: it is impossible to ascertain how much research effort there was, "effort" is not a cop out for a poor question, it often gets dragged down to debates about how often students have "no clue on where to start" etc. If ...
19
If a question includes a precise statement of the question they wish answered, includes enough context for us to judge where the OP's misunderstandings may lie and what sort of facts may be obvious to them, and is actually about mathematics, then, excepting extraordinary cases (to which we have custom close reasons and moderators), it should stay. The worst ...
19
"No context" does function as a bit of a catch-all, and certainly 90% of the time, it is applied to "do my homework!" PSQs. However, there are several reasons it is stated like it is.
Its "forms of context" list suggests ways that a question can be improved. For a user acting in good faith who happens to have asked a bad question, "lack of research effort" (...
18
Sorry about being late to weigh in - I was busy last weekend.
Why I support this feature-request?
The norm re context that we have developed means that new questions at varying levels of mathematical sophistication often get put on hold for falling short of that standard. That is all well. But, the fact that the message This question is missing context or ...
18
The question raises a valid point, but does so in a non-optimal way.
Can we please stop voting to close a question just because the question is short?
Yes, sure. Everyone agrees. Let's move on. Yet, wait. As discussed in comments there is an issue in any specific case. Was it really "just because"?
Actually, framing it as you did will invite others ...
17
Because many times you can get a better answer, you can get more answers, you can change your mind and decide that one answer is better than the others.
Because the questions are also for [future] readers, which might come from a different context and a different answer might be useful to them as well, or they might have some different idea.
Because this ...
16
The "homework" reason was a temporary placeholder, apparently taken from some other Stackexchange site or devised by SE ad hoc, for the (at that time, not yet written) "lack of context" reason derived directly from the meta.MSE discussions, and should be removed now that the latter exists.
The discussion on meta, over a period of weeks or months, ...
15
I was not involved in any step of putting the question on hold, but even cursory reading of your question and the related comments makes the hold reason "not about mathematics" perfectly valid: the question was not asked in good faith. You say in a comment that a submitted answer diverging from your answer key shows that the answer key is wrong, and that ...
15
About the first part of your question (about low effort posts) - this is exactly what the "missing context" close reason is for. (Of course, context is wider than just effort - there are also other ways to include context than just own attempts at the problem. A reasonable explanation what is meant by context can be found in the "Provide ...
14
Personally I think that it would be bad practice to close a question that is perfectly valid, it just doesn't feel right. (This is possibly in part because the question isn't really a duplicate, it is just about the same subject matter so I object to calling something a duplicate when it's not.) It might also annoy people who ask this type of question if ...
14
No, it doesn't really mean "off-topic", but it seems that the only way the SE platform supports site-specific closing reasons is by putting them under the "off-topic" heading. So that's where it ends up, as a matter of software.
answered Mar 10 '15 at 16:59
hmakholm left over Monica
272k2 gold badges34 silver badges63 bronze badges
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It may be relevant to downvote such a question, but that wouldn't merely be because it is asking for proof of something that is false. Something more is needed -- for example, sometimes a user will post a string of questions that boil down to "here's a random conjecture I made for no particular reason without verifying even the single-digit instances; please ...
answered Mar 15 '15 at 12:56
hmakholm left over Monica
272k2 gold badges34 silver badges63 bronze badges
14
This (second) answer is specifically about the newly added paragraphe and the question mentioned there:
The question in its original form:
Find the second solution. First solution is 1/(1-x) .Solve by Frobenius Method
question is x(1-x)y''+2(1-2x)y'-2y=0 please give complete solution.The first soltion i am able to get is 1/(1-x) . Other solution is 1/x but ...
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tl;dr: Vote to close with the reason that you think applies the best. If you're optimistic, you can also comment to explain your vote and explain the best way how to improve the question in your opinion.
The question will actually get closed as quickly no matter what reason you choose. Indeed, a question gets closed as soon as it gathers five votes to close,...
12
I'm thinking of anonymously downvoting all such questions whenever I see them.
Please do. I, for one, will appreciate your effort. Questions with negative score are easy to filter out.
Can an MSE member with 2,403 points vote to put a question on hold?
Voting to close requires 3000 points. Flagging to close requires merely 50, and its effect is almost ...
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(A new answer instead of editing Willie Wong's because of the long comment thread there.)
There has been introduced a new standard close reason:
This question is missing context or other details: Please improve the question by providing additional context, which ideally includes your thoughts on the problem and any attempts you have made to solve it. ...
12
I'll take this time to remind everyone of the golden rule of migrations:
Don't. Migrate. Crap.
That question would not have survived on mathematica.SE, so there's no point trying to migrate it there. (Incidentally, the question has been asked on mathematica.SE, and doesn't appear to be doing so well right now.)
Onto the other issue. Adding a migration path ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
