42
I’ve a rather wider view of what constitutes a good (or at least acceptable) question, so I don’t have your problem. Answering an interesting question in general or set-theoretic topology that forces me to hunt up and read (or at least skim) a relatively recent paper or two provides one kind of pleasure; offering a good hint or explanation to someone who’s ...
37
Isn't this just a form of gatekeeping, where you only get to ask a question about mathematics if you've already learnt enough of mathematics to rigorously formulate your problem?
This question seems to be built on some rather binary thinking: either (the question asserts) a question remains open and the asker is helped when people post answers, or the ...
30
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 ...
25
Not all users actually had the close privilege thus there were not five votes to close even though the review-ticket lists more than five reviews with that recommendation.
Likely this distinction should be made more clear on the ticket (as it is done for "delete" vs "recommend delete").
24
At some point this site seemed to become deluged with low-quality questions and it became significantly less fun for me to participate. Since then, however, I discovered that filtering out a few tags (homework, calculus) and favoriting a few others (like algebraic topology) significantly improved my experience. One drawback is that I do miss interesting ...
23
When a user account gets deleted, some of its actions (votes, reviews, etc.) sometimes move to the Community account so they will not be nullified (sometimes we do want these to be nullified, in which case the Community user is not assuming ownership on these actions).
Sometimes it's easy to just leave some traces of who was that user. But sometimes it's ...
21
A week has passed since this post, and I'd like to leave some useful pointers for everyone, which I think will help everyone continue to have a positive experience in the site, and keep the community healthy.
If you already commented a post regarding the EoQS and the behavior did not change, do not rinse and repeat. Please leave further interaction to the ...
20
Updated: put this suggestion at the top, since I felt it became important. Original answer follows below that.
My challenge to anyone who "doesn't like CURED":
Join the room and take actions at posts you see posted. You can react in whatever way you want as long as it is in good faith (i.e. not simply robo-voting everything open because you can't be ...
19
Mathematics is a very broad field. I'm a practicing research scientist and therefore an expert in some areas of applied math, but know next to nothing about e.g. algebraic topology. Some of the elementary questions posted here are therefore interesting to me and good practice, even though I'm sure they would be boring to domain experts.
Other times ...
18
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, 4 on Stack Overflow) will cause the post to be deleted immediately, provided it has zero or negative score. (If it has a positive score, it will raise an ...
17
I believe this is a self-correcting problem. Consider the type of core answerers we have on SE:
The newbie: This person answers anything they can in hopes of gaining rep.
The experienced: This person tries to encourage good question-asking. If they answer bad questions, they do so with a hint (or after sufficient time has passed, so their answer helps ...
16
Ask the answerer in a comment to expand their answer a bit, and explain that the idea of the site is that in general an answer is not just a link or a reference to a source that gives an actual answer. Yet, at least for the time being, I would let the answer stand; it does appear to provide some potentially useful information (the reference is quite precise, ...
15
A custom flag explaining the situation seems like a good idea when other initiatives are continually not taken up by the poster. Perhaps a note from a moderator is more effective than comments by regular users.
Commenting on the answers is important as well; highly upvoted comments can indicate community opinion and may provide some "peer pressure" to ...
15
Some decide instead of typing the actual text of the question, typesetting formulae with LATEX and using plotting software, it would be better for them to avoid the effort
Okay, hold on. You seem to be under the impression that computer typesetting and plotting is easy. Something anyone who uses this site should have in their skillset.
Do you really expect ...
15
In this case the problem is that the score of the post is too high for being deleted in this form. The idea is that apparently there are some that find value in the contribution and so it maybe should be kept after all. The score at the end of the review is not predictable in advance.
In any case, the exercises was not pointless. It is now a "disputed ...
15
We should set our standards high enough, that people doing the bare minimum to meet said standards, are still doing an acceptable amount. What those standards should be then is a question of "what is acceptable", and that's going to be a long conversation
14
There are no automatic account suspension. Each suspension is instated by a moderator or SE staff, who fixes the length. There are some basic guidelines but ultimately it is up to the moderator suspending (up to a year).
The automatic VLQ flags are often triggered by very short answers. But the automatic aspect of certain flags is really a tangent.
We ...
14
I disagree that this is only a simple yes/no question. Well the ultimate answer is either yes or no, but you do need justifications. Think, for example, if some user posted another answer saying
"No, the “cosets” in his notation are not the orbits under the right-action of $H$"
Then what should we do? How can we judge which answer is correct?
In ...
13
As long as your comment is polite, I see no reason why you should not make any appropriate suggestion. However, if you feel that a question is indeed bad, and you have the requisite reputation, then it might be more appropriate to cast a close vote.
Note that the reasons that people might have answered that question will vary depending on what you define as ...
13
Yes, absolutely! All relevant information must be included in the question.
Comments are temporary, and are intended to help improve the question or to leave minor or transient information. Relevant content or context should not be left in the comments. Instead, the information should be added to the question. Then, flag the comments as 'no longer needed'...
12
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 ...
12
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 ...
11
There are measures that can be taken, and are taken, to stop such things. I am not able to give details, which are not public for obvious reasons, but, e.g., (automatic) checks and restrictions are put on IP address from which a lot of poor content is created.
That is to say, to constantly flag, close, downvote, etc., this stuff is not completely useless.
...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible