119
votes
Can we please be more generous to elementary beginners?
While I am preparing (slowly, due to lots of urgent foreground tasks) a longer post about deletion on math.se, let me quickly suggest a simple guideline:
Do not roll back improvements to a question ...
- 16.3k
60
votes
Can we please be more generous to elementary beginners?
(Posting as an answer, rather than a comment, because I'm curious how many will disagree.)
I think the "little to do with being elementary" dispute strikes at the heart of the underlying issue here.
...
- 44.6k
36
votes
Is there an MSE-like site that is more pleasant to work in? Or are there other solutions?
I haven't been here long, and I rarely follow meta. That said, I am surprised and dismayed by what I perceive to be very open hostility among several prominent users here, over something that I ...
- 114k
33
votes
Is it appropriate to downvote answers for the sake of deleting a question?
There are so many approaches and reasons to upvoting and downvoting here (=Math.SE, not Meta) that it is IMHO largely pointless to attempt to codify them. A discussion is, of course, ok, if for no ...
- 124k
30
votes
Can we please STOP closing and deleting old posts with answers?
Thanks for saving me the time to post the exact same question. Let me just add my own examples to the list. My inclusion criterion is "contains a neat proof", which may be more liberal than yours, but ...
- 16.3k
28
votes
Should we vote to delete wrong answers?
In my opinion, the author of incorrect answers should, when an error is pointed out, delete their answer unless (or until) it is amended. If the author feels that the error is of value to the site, it ...
- 54.1k
24
votes
Accepted
Is it okay to delete unanswered, marked as duplicates questions?
It depends. Ultimately it's your decision whether you want to delete your unanswered duplicate questions - within the constraints of the software: you can't delete more than five of your own posts per ...
- 200k
22
votes
Accepted
Comment etiquette: Should one delete a comment about a minor error after correction has been made?
Delete your comment, flag any associated comments for deletion.
A toy example:
User 1: "I think there is a mistake on the third paragraph. Not every $X$ is a $Y$!"
User 2: "Sorry, I don't ...
- 32.4k
22
votes
A question quickly closed and deleted
There is a very simple reason why we should not encourage posting about open problems by plain amateurs. If we allow just one, to be consistent we would need to allow a hundred. With the recent ...
- 54.1k
21
votes
Accepted
Why is this answer “spam or offensive”?
The answer was flagged by several users as spam, and that caused the answer to be deleted as spam by Community♦.
These flags were of course incorrectly used, since the post is not spam according to ...
- 200k
21
votes
Is it no longer considered OK to post a comment of more than 600 characters as an answer?
In the spirit of the question: This started life as more of an extended comment than an answer. I think it has morphed into an answer now though.
Math.SE seems to be based around the idea that every ...
- 28.2k
20
votes
Should we vote to delete wrong answers?
Sometimes I have posted a wrong answer. (Hard to believe, I know.) But it seemed to me that the wrong method might be considered by others, so I left the wrong answer, and added a boldface This ...
- 98.5k
19
votes
Self-deleted answer undeleted by other users
If a question gets undeleted, the user who posted gets no notification about that undeletion. But you also get no notification if an answer of yours gets deleted. The only thing that happens (as you ...
- 403k
18
votes
Is undelete of comments already deleted.. possible?
Moderators can undeleted comments that were not deleted by the users. Namely, if you posted a comment and you deleted it, then moderators cannot undelete it. If, on the other hands, a moderator ...
- 373k
18
votes
I don't understand the deletion of a recent question
From my experience on Math Help Boards as an admin, I'd say that such behavior is often indicative of cheating. They get help real quick, then delete the post so that their professor doesn't catch ...
- 9,661
18
votes
Accepted
What to do with a question that is no longer relevant?
You should just delete it. There is no reason to clog up the site with questions that don't need to be answered. The localized nature of your mistake also makes it unlikely that the question will be ...
- 26.1k
18
votes
Accepted
Answer not deleted after six "Recommend Deletion"
Because the post has a positive score.
According to Shog9's answer on Is “recommend deletion” secretly a vote to delete?
Yes, a sufficient number of delete recommendations (currently 6 on most sites, ...
- 135
17
votes
Is it appropriate to downvote answers for the sake of deleting a question?
Here is some important context. There is, apparently, a massive campaign orchestrated by one user to delete all questions (and their answers!) if the question does not meet his standards of quality. ...
- 259k
17
votes
Why was this duplicate question deleted?
I've had calc students make the $e^{x^2}=e^{2x}$ mistake before, as non-associativity of exponentiation does not come up very often in lower level coursework. Beings that $\int e^{x^2}$ is often ...
- 26.1k
16
votes
Suggestion to improve the quality of questions.
Something in this spirit is being tested on SO — it's called «question triage». If the experiment is successful, maybe we can ask to turn it on Math.SE too.
- 16.7k
16
votes
Should I remove a link if given an external request?
Well, since your question has multiple answers (and upvoted answers, and even an accepted answer) you cannot delete it yourself. Since it is closed 10K+ users can vote to delete it, although presently ...
- 50.2k
16
votes
What are the merits, if there is any, of deleting (correctly) answered questions in the main site of MSE?
Deletion sends a rather clear message that the content is not welcome. To send this message is a merit of deletion. By contrast to put on hold/close yet not delete does not achieve much especially for ...
quidMod
- 41k
16
votes
Can we please be more generous to elementary beginners?
I have a great deal of sympathy with the general point being made here. I could say a lot - the challenge of maintaining quality whilst genuinely welcoming new contributors to the site is a tough one.
...
- 96.8k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible