PSQ

And here, we have a PSQ with the OP expecting a step by step answer.

@amWhy :)

@DavidReed Good to see you!

Thanks. I suppose its been awhile since I've been in here now that I think about it

Been distracted with school

@DavidReed Yeah... I can understand.

I jumped in yesterday to ask whether a path independent integrand is necessarily a gradient. To which the answer was "no idea". I found on Wikipedia that the answer is an affirmative.

Not certain while I dropped in today other then I realized I miss being on here

@DavidReed It's always good to see you!

Thanks. Ditto.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly non-Latin body, mostly non-Latin title: ξξτυξγηυξτηγυξγηξγηξθγηξγηξγξγξγηξ by Nav89 on math.SE

@XanderHenderson @amWhy @Did: PSQ from the same asker.

@amWhy @DanielFischer @Did: We should go for CREDUM. It would perhaps give us more credence, and it pairs up the inverse operations.

@XanderHenderson @amWhy @Did: Open for deletion.

@amWhy The lousy answers here are open for deletion. I think we should delete them before deleting the question.

@ZacharySelk I can only see this other post, but the one you mentioned seems a lot like a troll post. First time I see a post whose first revision says "Please refrain from posting comments other than related to the answer.My question is perfectly fine,and I do not need to review any rules/visit some other site/edit my question." GK A didn't even bother to get basic punctuation right.

Open for deletion by 20k users

@Did @amWhy @ZacharySelk: This HNQ is really quite ridiculous. So many mistakes that it almost seems like the asker didn't actually put in effort in checking. (Incidentally one 'error', namely the 'manipulation' from 1/sqrt(x) to x^(1/2)/1, was missed by all the answerers...)

And the same user posted this other poor question.

@user21820 And your attempt to TeXify the title was rolled back. :\

@XanderHenderson Yes - I'm not sure I think it's OK to use MathJax for the purpose of kicking things off of HNQ. I guess that if we keep rolling back, we'll find out what a moderator thinks. :)

Although, it's an admittedly poor question to argue about! :)

@MarkMcClure There are two reasons to edit that title: (1) the original title doesn't actually give a very good description of the content of the question; I'm not saying that the new title is great, but it does at least indicate which integral is being asked about (as opposed to one of the several other "Hey, I integrated wrong and got the wrong answer!)

(2) in the case of really terrible questions, I think that it is reasonable to TeXify a title to get it off the HNQ in the time before it gets closed.

@MarkMcClure The title was extremely bad in the first place. It did nothing to describe the question.

I just adjusted your edit @user21820 in order to fix the title-stretching limits

I understand your position and I certainly agree that's not a particularly good question, so I won't fight you on it. I just downvoted it in fact. :)

In general, though, I think that TeX in titles is poor form. I would much prefer - "A challenging integral", rather than $\longcomplicatedTeX$. Taking a quick look a this year's issues of The Monthly, there's not a single article with TeX in the title.

I have no problem with anyone downvoting that question but it's not a good idea to promote TeX in titles - certainly not for the sole purpose of kicking things off of HNQ.

math.stackexchange.com/users/555397/user555397 @Did @XanderHenderson @user21820 @amWhy check this user out, tons of garbage

@MarkMcClure That's an interesting point. However, I believe it is directly counter to the idea of SE as a repository. It is useless if all integral questions are called "interesting/challenging/hard".

@user21820 If SE is to be a repository, then PSQs are excellent questions! :)

Meta: More informative titles and Using MathJax/TeX in the titles of questions - yes or no? and probably many other questions.

@MarkMcClure I simply disagree with that last statement

@MarkMcClure It is supposed to be a repository of good questions as defined in the FAQ:

Anyway I need to go. See you all!

I definitely want to be able to quick a duplicate quickly just by looking at the titles. So I definitely prefer title with $F_{n-1}F{n+1}-F_n^2=(-1)^n$ over "How to show this property of Fibonacci numbers?". (In this case the identity has the name - which is probably even better or equally good title. But that is usually not the case.)

Of course, in the case of an integral that is long enough to make the title overflow over the page width, it probably need not be included.

I concur with you, @MartinSleziak

* "quick a duplicate" was supposed to say "find a duplicate"

@user21820 and @ZacharySelk Yes, I'm aware of the FAQ but PSQs fall right in line with SE's business model of wanting concise, non-chatty questions. It's a point I've made before so I'm really not looking for a long-winded argument here.

I see that the CRoUD in this room is bigger than usual. :-)

@MartinSleziak Or "quickly find a duplicate" ? :-) I think we all understood!

@MartinSleziak Thanks for those links!

@user21820 All are but 4 are open for deletion. 4 needs one more close vote.

There was an auto flag on that post which was cleared by a moderator with MathJax including title. I hope it will stay like this.

@MarkMcClure never convincingly to the best of my knowledge.

Perhaps if we want to continue general discussion, we can do so in another room - to leave the room primarily for the intended purpose. (Sorry for being a spoilsport. Some digression is reasonable, especially if it comes naturally from the questions which are mentioned there, but probably we should not go like that for too long.)

@quid Quite funny - thanks. I really don't need to convince you, though. It's a simple observation that PSQs fit well with SE's model and that a sizable percentage of users (including many high rep longtime users) think they're fine. Part of your job as a moderator is to be, well, moderate - to gently defend the middle ground. To the extent that you promote the use of TeX in titles to circumvent SE's own tools to identify good questions, you fall short on your responsibilities.

@MarkMcClure Martin asked that this discussion does not continue here so I won't reply beyond highlighting that from my formulation it should have been obvious that it was not I that cleared the flag.

If you want to continue the exchange we can do so here: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/64952/math-meta-chat

Hello, @Jyrki! Just popped in to see you entering. Good afternoon...errrr evening!

Hi @amWhy. Just checking out this room. I should probably visit chatrooms more often.

@JyrkiLahtonen You're always most welcome here!

@MarkMcClure I realize that PSQ is not exactly equivalent to homework, but Math.SE is not the only site constraining homework questions. Elsewhere they also insist that homework askers should do their research before asking. Physics banned homework altogether. I'm leaning towards the same, because neither the askers nor the answerers will abide by any compromise.

Thanks @amWhy.

@MarkMcClure Part of our job is to also enforce the jointly agreed policies. I'm gradually becoming convinced that we need to be more strict. Like insta-delete posts in violation.

This is a PSQ.

PSQ: Public Service Question? :P

A quote of a quote from Joel Spolsky's recent blog post: 'Jeff Atwood explained it: "Simple is fine. No effort and research is not."'

But also 'To novices, the long bureaucratic rigmarole associated with asking your first question on Stack Overflow can feel either completely unnecessary, or just plain weird.'

Yet then he goes on to explain how they are necessary.

But also 'In many ways Stack Overflow’s specific rules for what is permitted and what is not are obstacles, but an even bigger problem is rudeness, snark, or condescension that newcomers often see.'

This is preceded by 'One thing I’m very concerned about, as we try to educate the next generation of developers, and, importantly, get more diversity and inclusiveness in that new generation, is what obstacles we’re putting up for people as they try to learn programming.'

Maybe I am quoting a bit excessively. There's the full piece.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] URL in title: Is the span of a certemath.stackexchange.com/questions/253299/find-the-span-of-a-set-of-vectorsn subset unique? by Hicokuma on math.SE

This answer is rather poor

Now, this, is a PSQ

@JyrkiLahtonen You overstate the degree to which there are "jointly agreed policies". Even the group of just 10 moderators don't seem to have a lot of agreement on the policies.

@MarkMcClure actually that's an answer. Please note that this gotcha-style will not be tolerated.