CURED - 2018-09-18

amWhy

12:05 AM

@XanderHenderson flagged as spam; already had voted to delete.

The more "spam flags" the better: enough of them will lead to an auto-deletion.

Xander Henderson

yup

Alex Francisco

12:51 AM

Although I know this question was asked long time ago, it's still a PSQ with a superficial "try."

user21820

6:24 AM

@amWhy Deleted.

paulplusx

8:59 AM

It is a PSQ without any effort shown in the question but the user self-answered it.

Alex Francisco

9:36 AM

A PSQ with 5 up votes.

paulplusx

10:57 AM

7 years old PSQ with 11 upvotes.

@paulplusx I suppose there will be many old PSQs like this with great answers.

user21820

11:14 AM

@paulplusx If an answer is truly exceptional, I can understand granting a special exception. However, it should be done sparingly, otherwise users will jump at any straws to preserve a bad question that they gained rep from.

In any case, I think it is fair to close bad questions, regardless of whether they have good answers.

paulplusx

11:51 AM

@user21820 I agree with you.

I was just pointing out that when MSE was at its initial stages, the policies were not applied(or enforced) properly like they are done now because of which there are a lot of highly voted (some above 100, 200 or more) PSQs.

user21820

12:18 PM

@paulplusx Yes historical laxity is one factor. Another factor is that many of those highly-voted questions got randomly snuck onto the HNQ, and the silly SE system prevents drive-by voters from other sites (who have only 101 points on Math SE due to the rep bonus) from downvoting, but they can upvote. And many of them upvote really silly questions like the batman question.

Did

5:01 PM

Somebody understands this exercice from the first pages of Murray's opus on mathematical biology? See my comment under the question.

Xander Henderson

5:33 PM

@user21820 My understanding is that there is no loss of XP when an old question is deleted. Is this not correct?

amWhy

@XanderHenderson Not correct.

user21820

@XanderHenderson Askers lose the net rep gained for the question. Which is as it should be, if the question is really bad. Answerers may or may not lose rep gained, but I don't really know the rules.

Bounties are never lost, though.

amWhy

Answerers will lose always lose rep when a question they answered is deleted. It is only when a voter's account is deleted that one may or may not lose rep for one's answers to that user's questions.

user21820

@amWhy Hm I remember reading somewhere or someone telling me that old answers may not lose rep even if the question is deleted. But if the answer is deleted directly, then yes the net rep is lost.

Accepted answer bonus is always lost, but rep from upvotes/downvotes may not be if the answer satisfies certain criteria which I am not too sure of.

amWhy

Answers are deleted when a question is deleted, and one loses any rep gained from answering.

I think you are mistaking what happens when a user's account is deleted with what happens when a user's question is deleted.

user21820

5:46 PM

@amWhy I don't think so. According to my current knowledge, the answer to this unclear question will only lose 15 rep for the accept bonus, and not the 30 rep for the upvotes.

amWhy

In fact one user who hasn't been active since February specifically targeted questions I answered, by voting to close, and if closed, voting to delete; if closed, then they voted to delete. I've lost a lot of rep due to the deletion of many an old answer of mine, given in 2011, 2012,...

user21820

@amWhy The criteria includes the net vote-score of the answer.

amWhy

@user21820 Well, I'd have to confirm this with @quid, because I think you are mistaken.

user21820

@amWhy Sure. I was giving you an example I got from the review queue that you can try on.

I also just noticed the weird deleted answer by the asker; looks like they thought they could award themselves the bounty to get the rep back lol!

user21820

6:00 PM

Nonsense here and here.

amWhy

6:11 PM

@user21820 The first is now gone, the second needs one more downvote (on an answer with net -5 score).

paulplusx

6:45 PM

PSQ by a 33k user.

José Carlos Santos

@paulplusx Not a good question, to be sure, but I wouldn't describe it as a PSQ.

amWhy

@user21820 The first is now gone, the second needs one more downvote (on an answer with net -5 score).

TheSimpliFire

@JoséCarlosSantos I would say the contrary. First three lines: I need to solve u′′(θ)=Acos[u(θ)−v(θ)] for u:S1→S1, where A is a real constant and v:S1→S1 is given. is the Question. Last two lines: Is there any hope of an analytic solution? Can anything be said about the behavior of the solution as A varies? is the Problem. Hence I don't see anything about this question that is distinct from an average PSQ (with the exception of MathJax). If you're wondering, that close vote came from me.

2

Xander Henderson

Opinion based.

José Carlos Santos

@amWhy Yes, the OP displayed no effort. But a sentence like Is there any hope of an analytic solution? suggests that he or she isn't just pasting here a problem gotten somewhere else.

amWhy

6:55 PM

@JoséCarlosSantos I think you meant to reply to @TheSimpliFire's comment?

TheSimpliFire

@JoséCarlosSantos You pinged the wrong person btw. Well I could post something like 'I need to solve $x^3W(x^2)+x\log(x)=2e^x$. *Is there any hope of finding an explicit solution for $x$?' Would you close this?

@JoséCarlosSantos And if all PSQs started with 'Is it even possible/is there any hope/could there be a solution' then this short opening could rid them of the title?

José Carlos Santos

@TheSimpliFire Yes, I pinged the wrong person. Sorry about that.

quid

@amWhy I am not sure I understood the question. But if this answers the Q: There is a condition under which points are not lost upon deletion, it should be score >= 3 and at least 60 days on the site (non deleted). It was not always like this, but it is not a recent change either.

Reputation and Historical Archives

Josh Heyer on March 06, 2012

If you’ve been around Meta Stack Overflow the past few days, you’ve seen a fair bit of conversation sparked by the recent changes to how reputation is calculated:

To be clear: reputation values are not changing, every action in the system is still worth the same amount. Here’s what will be different:

Your reputation will be correct at all times

Deletions will have a much more immediate effect on reputation, not waiting on a recalc (but reputation sync takes up to 5 minutes on a delete/undelete action; as to not block the user’s response thread, it’s offloaded to a background queue) …

amWhy

7:11 PM

@quid Thanks, @quid. I (clearly) did not know that. I'd prefer if the standard were for answers with score >=4 that have been on the site for 120 days (prior to deletion). It's nothing for an answerer to gain a net score of +3 to a particularly bad question. And 60 days is nothing in terms of the outnumbered users working hard every day to weed out the worst.

@user21820 Indeed, it seems you were correct. I'll have to eat my words, I guess.

quid

7:23 PM

@amWhy yes it's rather generous.

Xander Henderson

7:37 PM

@XanderHenderson This rather poor opinion based question now has an answer. :\

amWhy

Are you talking to yourself, @Xander ? Just joking. How the question earned its upvotes escapes me. Hopefully, we'll field two more close votes to bar other "answers".

Xander Henderson

If you haven't already voted on this question, it should probably be deleted.

amWhy

@XanderHenderson Already voted. Seems we need three more delete votes to delete it. I pinned your message.

amWhy

8:14 PM

This question is a duplicate of this earlier question

David Reed

11:26 PM

I feel like if a non PSQ has multiple favorites it should automatically be deemed valuable to the site.

I should clarify I do not necessarily mean upvotes---I mean people putting it on their favorite list

Xander Henderson

@DavidReed Lots of people use favorites to "flag" questions that they want to come back to it later, perhaps to cast a delete vote, or to see if it has been improved so that they can remove a delete vote.

I don't think that "favorite" automatically means "is valuable to the site".

amWhy

@DavidReed I favorite questions I want to ensure I have a link to, because they are poor questions that will likely be deleted.

David Reed

Ah

Didn't realize that

Xander Henderson

@amWhy Oh, my! One more review item before you have the bestest gold badge on the entire site!

David Reed

There are legitimate favorites though as well. I like to think people genuinely favorited this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_that_%CF%80_is_irrational#Niven's_proof

amWhy

11:32 PM

@XanderHenderson I know, and you grabbed up the most recent! :p

Xander Henderson

Haha!

David Reed

5

Q: Boundary conditions for spherical harmonics

How does the constraint that the solution to $ \\ $ $$\left((1-x^2)y'\right)' - \frac{m^2}{1-x^2}y = \lambda y$$ $ \\ $ be square integrable on $[-1,1]$, force the solution to be bounded at $\pm 1$?

amWhy

@DavidReed I virtually never use "favoriting" on posts I really like.

David Reed

The trend with my questions is undeniably the more upvotes the more "favorites"

amWhy

@DavidReed Why did you post that question of yours from last year, here?

David Reed

11:35 PM

It was intended to go with my above comment in which I accidently posted a link to a Wikipedia article

@amWhy Because it was favorited by two people

amWhy

@DavidReed I tend to favorite questions with an excessive number of upvotes, for the quality of the question. Again, two people "favoriting" a post is not necessarily equivalent to two people who admire the post.

David Reed

@amWhy You just said "I virtually never use favoriting on posts I really like"

I'm suggesting that some people do

And the logic I am using is that statistically the correspondence between the number of upvotes my questions receive and the number of starts next to them are proportional makes it unlikely they are being "marked for deletion"

In short: Some people use the "favorite" function for its intended purpose as well

amWhy

It might even be something neutral: "favoriting" is merely a tool that can be used to "bookmark" a post, for later re-evaluation, to keep track of its status and if any improvement is made, to delete later, because they like it, because they think it exemplifies a problem that the user wants to address later.

David Reed

Yes exactly. I had assumed initially that the reason someone would favorite a post would be for their later reference in a productive way. I hadn't considered the purpose of marking it to make sure its deleted when I made my initial comment

amWhy

Indeed, it is the only means to bookmark a post and access it later, within MSE

David Reed

11:45 PM

So to be clear, I retract my statement that a nonpsq should automatically be deemed valuable if it has been favorited---because I wasn't aware of the practice of people favoriting it for its lack of value to aide in the deletion process

amWhy

@DavidReed Folks who have downvoted a post, and want to come back later to check if the post has been improved (to undo their downvote/closevote), and if not improved, to delete it, are in fact, favoriting a post in a productive way.

David Reed

That is not what I meant

poor choice of words

amWhy

@XanderHenderson I got my 1000th review of "Late answers" completed!!! Woot! Woot!

David Reed

@XanderHenderson What happened to "gamification is evil ;)"

lol

I guess one of you disliked my question

I hope it was a genuine dislike

amWhy

@DavidReed What question? "What happened to "gamification is evil"?

David Reed

11:51 PM

it would be quite childish if not

4

Q: Boundary conditions for spherical harmonics

How does the constraint that the solution to $ \\ $ $$\left((1-x^2)y'\right)' - \frac{m^2}{1-x^2}y = \lambda y$$ $ \\ $ be square integrable on $[-1,1]$, force the solution to be bounded at $\pm 1$?

functional-analysis differential-equations spherical-harmonics

Was just downvoted since posting it in here

Xander Henderson

@DavidReed It is evil.

Doesn't mean that I don't fall for it.

amWhy

@amWhy @Xander, do I get a "high five"?

Xander Henderson

@amWhy o/

Transcript for

$Mathematics$ CURED