@MartinR I find the practice of posting an answer and instadeleting it a bit questionable, but it does happen. Has happened to me when I was nerd-sniped into thinking about a cute problem without checking that it is good enough. Michael Rozenberg is not the worst. Lab Bhattacharjee often posts a 2-line hint within a minute or two, and then expands it to something resembling an actual answer within the grace window - meaning that the crude earliest version won't even show in the edit history!
(cont'd) Unless someone comments on it - that stops the grace window. Again, I should not cast the first stone for I have posted half- bakes things on some occasion. For example when Missus calls me to dinner, and I need to postpone polishing it. The race to get the earliest timestamp gets to many of us. Some are more prone to it than others.
@JyrkiLahtonen: I wasn't aware that this is well known phenomenon. The two users you have mentioned have already acquired a lot of reps. Does the hunger for reps die down that one has to resort to tactics. I thing the gamification aspects requires the uses to be gamifically honest about it.
Correct last sentence. I think the gamification aspect here implicitly requires that users be gamifically honest about it.
@ParamanandSingh I thought it's mostly about rep, but that's not the whole truth. Peer appreciation is likely a bigger factor. Nerdy types are often not like fish in water in social situations (I'm obviously projecting here), and look for appreciation from elsewhere. The upvotes don't always come from "peers", but still...
@JyrkiLahtonen: that's a dimension I never thought through. Well there are quite a few people here with not so high rep and yet I appreciate them highly. Even the mod team consists of people with not a very high rep. But may be my criteria for appreciation is different.
Do geometry questions (like this) often include no context but have good number of worthy solutions? I can now sense the dilemma faced by some users here about deletion / undeletion of such questions.
I want to edit this question to improve its formatting. But when I click the edit button, the bold letters which were visible in the question becomes normal text. Why is it so?
@JyrkiLahtonen At face value, while that may be a factor of the matter, I don't think condoning every way people may use to get approval from peers is a sound practice. Gang members seek approval from other members in their gangs. Some kids start using drugs to seek approval from other peers. My point is, while perhaps you lend a human appeal to why people do what they do, doesn't really go very far, in terms of justifying all behaviors driven by a need for social approval.
@XanderHenderson Did you vote to close this? If so, was it reopened? I just went to the post, and was the "first" to vote to close, unless it was reopened.
@amWhy Not condoning anything, really. Trying to guess/understand the motives in the fond hope of finding a cure. Can you hear Bill D protesting that I should not try and guess what motivates others?
@JyrkiLahtonen No, and I'm glad I don't hear him now! I understand, and I think it helps to portray most people as seeking approval, or appreciation, and not so much as people being greedy, and such. I just wanted to emphasize that we all would do well to try to understand people, before judging, but also to stress that there are better and worse ways to satisfy those needs for appreciation/approval. I know you know that; I have no doubt.
@JyrkiLahtonen And it's just as incumbent upon the community to be careful of what they show appreciation/approval of.
