Math Mods' Office - 2018-08-22

quid

12:02 AM

As I said let's wait and see how it works. I think it's more a detail.

Shog9

...no I didn't.

what the hell

your last deleted comment on MSE was from October of last year, and you deleted it yourself

quid

12:28 AM

@amWhy I can still see some comments of you there (I think three over two posts, but it's a bit crowded) and Shog says nothing was deleted. So maybe all is good or if something is missing you might repost.

Checking in the user profile five actually.

Jasmine

4:30 AM

@amWhy i just saw some of the users were suspended and the reason was given irregular voting. I just wanted to know what 'irregular voting' mean out of curiosity.

user1732

\o @AlexanderGruber

what does

$${\Large \triangle}^{\hspace{-9.9pt}{{\bigcirc\hspace{-6.85pt}\odot}}}$$

mean?

Alexander Gruber

@user1732 that'd be the all seeing eye of the illuminati my friend

user1732

:-D

quid

10:35 AM

@Jasmine it can mean different things. Generally it means that votes (up/down) were used in an inappropriate way. For example and a common case, is a user might have used two accounts that voted for each other.

The messages are intentionally left vague. Specifics of individual suspensions are usually not discussed.

amWhy

1:52 PM

@Shog9 I'm sorry, @Shog9. I think when I first looked back, I was looking under a different answer than the one I commented on. Please accept my apologies.

Shog9

3:20 PM

@amWhy no worries. Next time though, maybe ask before accusing?

amWhy

@Shog9 Indeed! And thank you.

Xander Henderson

4:11 PM

@AsafKaragila That is a joke, right?

Also, I don't see how to mark the question as "community wiki". Is that possible?

quid

@XanderHenderson it's mod-only. (not sure why you would want it though)

Generally I am not sure if it was a good idea to post that poll.

Asaf Karagila

4:38 PM

@XanderHenderson why?

quid

@AsafKaragila because there are plenty of links in the post I suppose.

amWhy

6:11 PM

@quid and all. I feel slightly more at ease with the "new contributor, valid for a week? after first question, ditto for after first answer": I've see three cases today in which I encountered questions like this, but from a user with 1 rep point, but who is not, by the definition of "new contributor" considered a "new contributor". However, for me, the bigger problem is how "new contributor" status is conferred a "new user" each and every ...

Jasmine

@quid ok thank you for the information

amWhy

...time they create a new account under a different username, they are again granted "new contributor" status. When will the powers that be focus their time and energies not so much on the basically honest users, and spend the suck of energy put into "New contributor" design and implementation and research, to better spend it on identifying and filtering out users who use this site in bad faith? Stop making it more and more tempting for users to quit an account and just start over ...

... time, and time, and time, and time, again.

I understand SE wants to draw and keep in new users (hence more official "accounts") because the more membership, the more clout and prestige for the network on the internet, and so might have a vested interest in not caring if one user has just created their 11th account, having abandoned, or deleted, or had deleted, 10 other accounts. More numbers of new users gaming the network will, eventually, lead to its downfall. I can't accept I'm the first person to have noticed the tons of incentives

...offered new users, especially now with the SE-dictated coddling of anyone creating a new account, new or old. Just don't neglect the tried and true, nor those who have invested years into trying to improve various sites on the network.

@Shog9 ... I've entered into SE territory, and so really not in the ballpark of this site's moderators. I will fully, whole-heartedly, embrace the "new contributor" coddling, but only when SE spends some time and energy in identifying "false positive "new users"". If there is no means SE has to help curb the incentive for users to abandon or delete accounts, and open new accounts, regularly, then perhaps some rethinking of priorities needs to happen on SE? If not, I'll simply consider ...

..."new contributor" to mean: Someone who just created their first, or second, or sixth, or 12th, or ... account. And from what I've seen, that's how a significant number of SE users will view it.

quid

7:01 PM

@amWhy I am not a specialist on this, but I think it is just very difficult to do this (without being invasive). There are some measures in place, but ultimately I fear it is near-impossible to prevent somebody from creating a new account. The "price they pay" is that they miss out on some privileges, suffer from tighter rate limiting, and it is likely inconvenient. I understand that this is not a satisfying answer. But there are some incentives to have a stable account too.

amWhy

You fail to mention the price longer term users have to pay when dealing day in and day out with serial-account-creators. That's huge! It accounts for a chunk of work done by users in the review queue ((not) first posts, low quality posts, close votes especially come to mind.) Not to mention the wear and tear on the most active users' patience with new users. SE had the will to "invade" the space of new account users to brandish them with a scarlet letter, ...

and they invade active users' space for being scolded into spoon-feeding anyone, new or not, with a new account. It also will deteriorate users' morale, more than any minimal (if any, or if negative) boost to the moral of a user of a newly created account.

Next thing SE is likely to invest energy is in sending out emails to all accounts' associated email addresses who remain rep 1 to encourage them to return, with a banner Welcome returned contributor username!

I think SE staff and SE Community Managers spend too little time experiencing the nitty-gritty life on SE of the most dedicated "regular" site users, network wide.

Trish

8:14 PM

I may be spoiled from other sites, but I find it... disturbing that questions here seem to get answered in comments regularily and without anybody caring about it. The main Stack Exchange Meta has LOTS of topics about this behavior and it us a strong concensus over the sites that comments are not the right place for answers, as comments are very... fragile and vanish at the drop of a head.
Yet when I asked someone "Mind making your one-line-answer better by explaining why?" I get an **upvoted** comment that I should read the comments. Yes, I read the comments but... Why don't the people bot…

quid

@Trish good question, the answer is a bit complex I think. But I agree it is not great as it is (I might be in a minority though).

Xander Henderson

@AsafKaragila Because I did link to a bunch of past questions?

@quid I want the question to be as clear as possible, and I think that specifically marking the question as community wiki gives others permission to edit and add to it to clarify the question without having to deal with me.

Trish

@quid I did flag the first answer in comments as such, it oddly enough got declined despite the main Stack Meta clearly saying you should not anwer in comments. meta.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment

Xander Henderson

I see a lot of "Hint: do this..." style answers in the review queues, and I don't really have a clear idea about what to do with them. Personally, think that they should be deleted (since they don't actually provide answers to the questions being asked), but past conversations give very little guidance. Thus far, it looks like I shouldn't be recommending deletion.

Trish

@XanderHenderson I would flag them as "not an answer"

Xander Henderson

8:20 PM

@Trish which is why I asked the question on meta.

Again, it looks like the consensus is that hints-as-answer are acceptable, assuming that the hint meets some minimal threshold.

quid

@XanderHenderson yeah, on this site the hint business still seems too big to fail I am afraid.

Xander Henderson

Coolio. I now have (a) a course of action when I see such answers on the queues and (2) a place to send people with respect to such decisions.

Though I must admit that I find the result disappointing. :(

I don't like hints-as-answers, as they seem to align poorly with the idea that MSE should be a repository of questions and ANSWERS.

A hint is not an answer. :\

quid

@Trish this is the meta question @Xander mentions. Coincidentally he just asked it:

2

Q: Is it acceptable to leave hints as answers?

Question: Is it acceptable to leave a hint as an answer? For the purposes of this question, let me attempt to define a "hint". A hint is a short, generally terse, comment which does not provide an answer to the question asked, but instead gives a running start on the problem which, if ...

Trish

@quid looking at that... and pulling only from the main site FAQ I get a "it should not be"

amWhy

For what it's worth, most current Hint: blah blah questions fail. Occasionally, though, some users get hints right, and some of those who do, may not even use "hint" as a disclaimer. My main point, because I laugh aloud at many proposed "hints" is Never say never, especially when dealing with a wide-range of interpretations of hints.

quid

8:26 PM

@Trish yes, that's what I said, initially. :-)

Trish

Answer the question
Read the question carefully. What, specifically, is the question asking for? Make sure your answer provides that – or a viable alternative. The answer can be “don’t do that”, but it should also include “try this instead”. Any answer that gets the asker going in the right direction is helpful, but do try to mention any limitations, assumptions or simplifications in your answer. Brevity is acceptable, but fuller explanations are better.

That's from the mainside "how to answer"

I will just put stres on What, specifically, is the question asking for? Make sure your answer provides that

Xander Henderson

@Trish I agree, but remember that MSE is community moderated. The rules are not a cudgel that we beat each other over the head with, but guidelines for directing the gross behaviour of the community.

Trish

in most cases a hint is not providing what the question is asking for.

Xander Henderson

If the majority of users feel that hints are okay answers, then hints are okay, whatever the FAQ states.

quid

@amWhy I think my main problem with posts that start with "Hint" is exactly that it is not quite clear what it signifies.

Somehow I wanted to leave...

I'll try again. See you later.

amWhy

8:29 PM

@quid That's a good point.

Xander Henderson

(and yes, I am exaggerating slightly for effect, but the basic point stands: we should treat questions and answers in a manner that is consistent with the desires of the majority of the community)

amWhy

Please, @Xander, understand that I rarely upvote "hints", and sometimes downvote them. Not to mention how a few users preface full solutions with Hint: That annoys me to no end. Or the Hint: Use Pythagorean Theorem.

Maybe it would be easier to frame the question as "What necessary conditions must an answer satisfy in order to be considered, at minimum, an "answer" to a question"?

Trish

0

A: Is it acceptable to leave hints as answers?

This is from the official, overruling Stack Exchange help center (emphasis mine): Answer the question Read the question carefully. What, specifically, is the question asking for? Make sure your answer provides that – or a viable alternative. The answer can be “don’t do that”, but it shou...

groans... Wow... the request to provide a proof to "The curve does "intersect itself" since it meets the origin many times." is ""the curve doesn't intersect itself" is the condition that the function is injective on the interval with one endpoint removed" - which... is just a rephrasing...

quid

8:50 PM

@Trish thanks for the answer. (Note that some do not like referecnce to the network at large on this meta; thus if there is some push-back don't take it personally.)

Trish

@quid hey, but we have to abide to the network at large. If we don't, they may choose to kick the mods and place themselves there at any time and enforce the network. happened in some beta-sites.

quid

@Trish on the one hand that's of course true, on the other hand this site is one of older ones in the network and the second by size (in various metrics), that is to say, it's not unreasonable that it has a bit if "a life of its own" even though I personally am rather aligned with the general network policies.

Trish

@quid yet even here, when you click help and type in answer, you get the exact same text

math.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer

quid

9:07 PM

@Trish yes, I think we are mostly on the same page on this (but some others aren't). But we'll see how the discussion goes. See you.

Xander Henderson

@amWhy In retrospect, that is a better question to ask. I really am just seeking some clarity and guidance about what to do when confronted with a review queue "Hint: do this" style answer.

Trish

@quid by the way, after I linked to "what is a comment NOT for" in the custom reason box, the comments got culled.

Xander Henderson

@amWhy As to the "Yes" answer, I've undeleted it, but I don't think that it actually adds any information whatsoever.

An up or down vote does not communicate any of the nuance that is contained in your comments.

amWhy

Perhaps not, but at least respect those who voted "yes". Of course, I could go back and retract my votes, and it will make yes look better.

@XanderHenderson I worked with the options that were given, initially, okay? I can't keep checking every 15 minutes to see whether other options were provided, or the question changed.

amWhy

9:51 PM

@XanderHenderson It was a very good move to bring up the issue on meta. So although I may be nitpicking, please know that I impressed that you brought this issue up on meta, because each user on their own has been defining for themselves if a hint can be an answer; if so, what sort of hint. Else, What counts as an answer. I would rather reach consensus (or narrow the field of what counts as an answer), in part to help fortify action against poor "hints" and poor answers, in general. So thanks

Xander Henderson

@amWhy Thanks for the encouragement. And, again, let me reiterate: my one and only goal is to achieve some kind of consensus so that I have a better idea how to handle such answers in review (and when I see them in the wild).

amWhy

@XanderHenderson I understand that. And it's a good goal to seek. Likely, we may be lucky to be able to exclude one or two forms of hints, agreeing they should not be considered answers. But reaching consensus on issues raised on meta, or on issues concerning "best practices" on this site has long eluded the best of attempts to do so. I have to say, you've been exceedingly fair in trying to represent different positions in a "fair" light. That's an asset, compared to a good many posts (rants) ...

... asked on meta that read link an editorial, and some of them, nothing more than rants.

I'm sure for your post, we'll see it gain more attention, and opinions, maybe some more good ideas in comments, maybe another well written answer, or two, or more, and perhaps someone answering with a complaint about a particular answer of theirs that was downvoted or closed as "low-quality" or "not an answer", or even deleted, which had sought to provide a "hint".

@Xander Good case studies might be helpful to examine wrt the meta question (not posted in a whine or rant), but rather: "This was a question [state and link question], and this was offered as a hint [state hint and link to answer]. And maybe another such linked question, and linked answer with the heading "hint". I think we can all get lost with hypotheticals, people prone or adept at finding exceptions to rules; other people prone or adept at finding general patterns...

...can sometimes butt heads initially, some noticing a trend, some noticing important exceptions to a trend, some doing both, that initially, it can appear people are talking past each other. I think something helpful will come from it; at least I am hoping so crosses fingers

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$Mathematics$ Math Mods' Office