@vitamind OMG. @Xander when you've got time, please address the post vitamind last linked to. Also, the OP of this question has responded to almost every comment and answer, in a rather unfriendly manner (entitlement syndrome). I flagged one of their comments below one of the answers.
Did you want users to help you, @navyism? The least we ask of you is that you be respectful of all users. No one is paid here, not even moderators. We volunteer our time. If you don't like the answers here, you're free to pay for more assistance. — amWhy21 mins ago
:57917750 At 10 K, you can vote to delete any post open for deletion at day three from when it was posted. At 20K, one can vote to delete immediately, any question at <=-3, or any answer <= -1.
@XanderHenderson One draw back about geometry questions is that questions and answers are often upvoted just because they look "pretty", not necessarily on the merits of the question/answer.
This question was deleted by asker after I pointed out that the result in question does not hold. What surprises me is that it got 3 upvotes in small amount of time. Users should verify the mathematical correctness of a post before an upvote. If they don't have the desired expertise in that topic then better not to cast an upvote.
It appears the asker undeleted again. I need to re-engage with asker.
The following question involves 2021 in its problem. Due to concerns about potential cheating with contests, I added a comment with a link to an appropriate meta question about this issue. However, since the question itself is fairly reasonable as the OP has provided their attempt, & I don't have any particular evidence that there's anything inappropriate, I didn't do anything else (e.g., vote to close). Note there's also now 3 answers. Perhaps more should be done. If so, please suggest what.
Solve in integers the equation:
$(x^2−4y)+(y^2−4x)+xy(x−4)(y−4)=2021$.
Firstly I noticed that the factors of $2021$ are $43$ and $47$. This has something to do with the $4$ throughout the question as $43-47=-4$. This is my first time doing such type of question. Can the answer be like $(0,-43),(0...
I just noticed the OP of the question above asked another question, which was closed yesterday, that also involved 2021. In fact, there were comments re: it may be from a contest, plus asking for the source and date of the question, but with no response by the OP. As such, I just voted to close the question above with a custom message about it possibly being from a contest & the OP not providing when & where the earlier question is from.
Yes, mathjax uses its own fonts hosted on its cdn. I think the only change is the sans-serif fonts (typically they are used in link below the posts for Close, Follow, Share, Delete, Flag).
The posts themselves uses serif fonts on math se and they are not affected. So I don't think there should be major change.
@vitamind: Maybe you have already dine it, but just flag the question fo the moderators and give a good reason on why this question should be closed. It is a fun question, but very subjective.
@OliverDiaz Good point, I did exactly that. I don't want to strip the fun entirely so I left a comment saying we can work this out to something interesting, but I realize I'm still heavily diverging from the asker's attention, so I am expecting a rejection. (And sorry for an incident a fair time ago when I prodded you on a post you answered : it was a bad day for me in general and I want to put that behind us)
@user1729 I don't think you are missing anything, this question is decent apart from the fact that it's not written in MathJax. In fact, I'm looking at the previous question of this user here as well, and while the attempt has some basic things off, user has added MathJax as well, and engaged heavily in comments.
We have to be careful regarding elementary questions. See the user's last comment as well on the previous question as well.
While we can ask for reviewing the content that these people frequent before they come to MSE (I know the doubtnut channel, it's just : "here's the formula, now do this question" , and "here is the trick, now do this question" and so on. It's meant for quick consumption and has stayed that way) , I think (similar to a question we spoke about here earlier) that it's difficult to make out if an attempt is dishonest versus there being a deep issue in the attempt.
And here , the answers , I don't know if they are mocking the question or just trying to answer it anyway, but they shouldn't have, and if it is a mockery then that's just sad.
@TeresaLisbon I appreciate your olive branch offering. It's all water under the bridge. It just so happened that your posting came about the same time that the Texas legislature was passing laws to take us back to the good ol Jim Crow times, and I went all marching to Selma on you. My apologies too.
@Peter "Jim Crow" was a fictional character. Oliver is (I presume) referring to the Jim Crow laws, which were the laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern U.S.
@OliverDiaz I see! I hope the laws have not been passed, they really seem very outdated and outright discriminatory. I wouldn't want a law like that passed here in India, then again if you see commercials and movies, discrimination is almost a commonplace thing. Every second advertisement is a fairness cream. Beauty parlours in my city are referred to as (translated from local language) "whitening parlours".
India is certainly witnessing all kinds of divisive laws being passed, however, and even in the time of the virus raging, all the newspaper talk is about what religious tool will next be used to polarize the population of a particular state. I roughly understand how the US political system works, but I sincerely hope it's not half as chaotic as the situation here, where people would rather have the virus than understand an opposite view.
@TeresaLisbon The most important factor is prize stability. And concerning this, the situation is awful in germany. Energy and oil have (again) record prizes. And in every nature film, the climate change is mentioned and that something must happen (of course something making the normal population very very poor). I think, India is at last not the worst country. What worries me, that the power of Trump in the USA has not fully be broken.
@Peter Just as user1729 said. A bad has it of us Americans to think everybody knows about American politics and history. Fortunately not a topic for MSE.
Why does it feel like I'm doing more work, and others here are doing more work, to dv, alert mods, etc., than they are doing in response to flags reporting ongoing violations of the EoQS? I slowly lose points, putting my points where commitment is. And what are mods doing? They're not even deleting answers to crap, let alone doing crap to warn or otherwise hold habitual users who keep on doing what they've always done, with impunity. Shakes head in disbelief.
If mods aren't going to do a damn thing, we should all continue to flag, so they are not off the hook; but we need more downvotes and delete votes on answers that violate the EoQS - so some chronic PSQ answerers finally encounter consequences that hurts them the most: losing rep.
Mind you @quid, I am referring to posts that regularly come up in the close queue, the first posts queue, and the low quality queue, where I open the question or answer in question, when the post ought to be closed, and only then, see who answered the poor question. I never go anymore to any user's profile. And the users of commented below, after which I flag, and I may downvote questions and answers as a result, buth they all keep on doing what they've always done. With impunity.
So again, you put us on the front lines, then blame us for casualties. Change is not going to happen until it vigorously enforced. Put your actions as mods, behind the pretty wonderful claims you recently made.
I also meant to include, in my last comment, that when we experience casualties, SO, SE, and mods consider the retaliation we suffer to be collateral damage. We seem to frequently be treated as though we are dispensable.
@amWhy there are at least two reasons for this. First, it seems likely that objectively you invest more time into this than most or even all moderators. Second, you are aware of all that you do but you are not aware of all that we do. For example, you cannot know if/when/how we talk to other users about this. However, you were informed about the fact that we are in the process of doing this.
The announcement was also clear in that there will not be any immediate mass-suspensions.
What does and will happens is that some users get informed about them not complying to guidelines. Then we will see if they change their conduct or not. Then further steps will be considered.
In particular it is not clear how you can assert that we do not warn users. Arguably you can know that we do not call them out publicly but this does not mean that we do not warn them. Actually some were already warned and more will be warned.
@amWhy Please keep in mind that a lack of publicly visible action does not indicate a lack of action. We are like swans, our little webbed feet paddling frantically just below the surface.
@XanderHenderson I understand that. You've been shouldering 90% of this new effort, as moderator. I did not want to call you out, or any mod specifically. I'm a bit pressed for time too, but closer to the end of the tunnel than you are. No problem!
@quid My point is, many of them, if actually messaged by mods, keep on doing it, which I flag, not knowing if warned or not, and that's what I mean, some keep on answering poor questions with impunity. Yes, I need to be patient.
@quid I can't understand what you are actually saying in your last comment, @quid. There's a miss-match after "mixed messages" and before "what exactly we want". Run on sentence.
@amWhy the communication on what exactly we want users to do was likely not clear enough.
What I would find especially helpful is a flag that points out several posts of the same user in clear violation of the policy after it was announced. I mean one flag with several links.
@quid Oh, I see! That I understand. Yes, I think there was some such confusion.
@quid Okay, but I've been told just sheer quantity of flags against a user (like me) has more weight than a flag I may cast on another. I was left with the impression that I need to flag each and every time I find a transgression. Also, to do what you are suggesting would require me to go back the the users profile, to find the previous posts I found flaggable, but waited to flag. Pedro et al has severely cautioned us against going to a users profile to find the links one wants.
@quid, Even with you suggestion, together with others who've accosted us, remains confused. In short, we feel damned if we do a, b, or c, and damned if we make the wrong choice. I think it reflects a lack of complete consensus among mods, procedurally. It seems most are onboard with the "general idea", but the ideas of implementation are incongruent.
You no very well, @quid, the position I am in, such that I cannot act in any way which is not transparent. I can not afford to go a a user's profile. I flag what I think is rude, a violation, etc., as I encounter such posts on main, in the review queue, or in CURED, or in the Moderator Tools. Many flags variously on one user: that tells you something. I worry sometimes that mods confuse what would be easier for them,
@amWhy there is no rule against going to a user profile. There are rules and recommendations against taking actions on numerous posts of one user at the same time or close in time.
even if it might call me into question, given I have absolutely no benefit of the doubt.
@quid That's what you're asking me to esssentially do. Take action, by flagging, including links to numerous posts of one user, at the same time, in one flag.
If you see a post of a user in violation of the policy and you want to flag it you can go in addition to the user profile and see if there are other instances. Then you raise one flag on the most recent post and say that this post is in violation and it is not a fluke but there are other cases, eg, link1 link2 link3.
@amWhy Yes I meant to propose to do this. I'll share the comment just above.
Alert!!! All are invited, including @user1729, @JohnOmielan, @KReiser, @MattSamuel, @MartinR, (many others were invited directly from the Cafe chat ) to participate in are newest word search challenge, in honor of MOTHERS DAY tomorrow.
@amWhy Same : my downvote sits there. We need just one more user @Peter @vitamind @XanderHenderson to downvote there, delete it and then me and @amWhy can delete it.
@amWhy Same : my downvote sits there. We need just one more user @Peter @vitamind @XanderHenderson to downvote there, delete it and then me and @amWhy can delete it.
For some time I have had a strange obsession with creative ways to express the number one. For example, we have the basic examples
$$
1=9\sum_{n=1}^\infty 10^{-k}
$$
and
$$
1=\int_0^\infty e^{-x}\,\mathrm dx.
$$
So what are some other interesting and more complicated ways to express unity?
Like "How many ways can we rewrite $1$?" is a fun question. It is certainly something worth cataloging, and there is a lot to say about it. But it likely belongs on a blog. Or a reddit thread. It isn't really, fundamentally, a mathematical question.
@TeresaLisbon I just voted. We need one more delete vote.
@XanderHenderson Ooh, $\pi +2 -\pi, +i^2$... Wow, look how pretty that looks! Just saying, at a certain point, it just comes down to clever manipulations, rather than mathematical insight.
I seem to remember a post from a few years ago which involved "integral milking". Same idea. Start with something really simple, then perform a bunch of obfuscatory manipulations to get a scary looking integral. Then magically evaluate the integral in front of an audience.
@XanderHenderson Yes, I remember that one two: asking to deliberately make an integral look intimidating, to undo the manipulations to make it so intimidating, to impress an audience.!
Any probability distribution integrates to 1, and some PDFs like the normal PDF and the Cauchy PDF are actually very beautiful expressions. I particularly love it with I prove an event has probability 1 (which is "something equal to 1") using a 0-1 law like the Engelbert-Schmidt 0-1 law. I love it. Just love it.
@amWhy Correct, I was too enthusiatic to post it here, because sometime I vote to close and then forget to post here. So this takes priority, then I vote to close anyway, like I have just done. But thanks for the spot.
@vitamind Ah, thanks , I see you have downvoted. It all matters, if the question reopens we will need to pull off the hard work again, the vote count will be helpful.
Indeed, @vitamind Feel free to click on links, but decide for yourself. I never want users in this chat to give in to what they might see as peer pressure, etc. This room is huge, and can accommodate differences of opinion. Your input matters too.
(Note : I'm sincerely getting confused as to which user has been EOQSed and who has not , so I'm not leaving comments if I think the user has been EOQSed, but I'm flagging).
That means I could end up leaving users who haven't been EOQSed. If you think a particular user has certainly not been EOQsed please do it.
If you see a post of a user in violation of the policy and you want to flag it you can go in addition to the user profile and see if there are other instances. Then you raise one flag on the most recent post and say that this post is in violation and it is not a fluke but there are other cases, eg, link1 link2 link3.
@Teresa, please follow up on the comments immediately before the linked comment, where the initial suggestion given by quid, seemed to conflict with Pedros comments when he invaded this chatroom.!! And he plans to send the statement along to other mods, as well!
@amWhy It would, then again I have benefit of hindsight, since a couple of users frequent CURED conversation, so I have access from here itself! (Here comes the avalanche!)
@TeresaLisbon Overall, I only suggested that you go over them, because I explicitly brought up the explicit messages we received to avoid at all cost, going to users' profiles.
@TeresaLisbon Moreover, the bounty is to reward an existing answer, which indicates that the Q&A was useful to someone (10 years later). This seems to be a success story.
Even if the question is poor by current standards.
@TeresaLisbon Not at all. The discussion is valuable.
And other's might disagree with me.
@TeresaLisbon Ugh... a new answer. Not my field, so I can't really comment on the quality of the new answer (if pressed, I might be able to define what is meant by "cyclic group", and I have a vague recollection of things called "Sylow theorems"...), but I have to wonder if the new answer adds anything to those which already exist.
@XanderHenderson Well, I don't mind the fact that it's an old question, but I'm disappointed that there had to be answer in the middle of all that, if the bounty is to reward an existing answer inserting another answer seems to me like wanting to take advantage of some attention. Let me (in like 2 minutes from now) bring you a short note on the answer w.r.t the other answers.
For starters, I believe that there are tools which are elementary, but which are heavily hidden : for example, the proof that a subgroup of index equal to the lowest prime power dividing the order of the group is normal, is not that easy.
It's not a cent percent clear how the semi-direct product is trivial if p doesn't divide q-1.
I also see some similarities with the end of user Beginner's answer.
In fact , I see parts of it in Brandon Carter's answer as well. I see the whole thing there, pretty much. (Review end)
@TeresaLisbon @Xander, I've flagged, easily, five posts from that answerer, as recent as yesterday. If I flag their answer here, given what quid said, should I include their recent answers in my one flag today?
@Xander That answerer, probably more than any other answerer, has not slowed down whatsover; if anything, their activity has picked up after your meta post.
@XanderHenderson I ask because I flagged individual flags over the past four days. But I understand that linking a bunch may be more helpful in one flag. Though many of their answers have since been deleted, along with the questions they answered.
For some time I have had a strange obsession with creative ways to express the number one. For example, we have the basic examples
$$
1=9\sum_{n=1}^\infty 10^{-k}
$$
and
$$
1=\int_0^\infty e^{-x}\,\mathrm dx.
$$
So what are some other interesting and more complicated ways to express unity?
