@amWhy (and others with old, unresolved flags) The following may be of some interest: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/370418/… .

Let it be known that I am very sorry that there is a backlog here (though we cleared about 75% of it in the last two weeks, so we are getting caught up!).

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Pattern-matching website in answer (77): Probability of a telephone number starting with a fixed number, 3 for example, and ending with two fixed numbers, 18 for example, matching another #? by Ben James on math.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (62): Are there 'serious' mathematical problems emerging from data science? by Abhay Sharma on math.SE

Collatz @Peter @ArcticChar

@XanderHenderson No problem. The person who raised that question is also a bit of a hothead and has been suspended for a week to cool down.

@user21820 One more delete vote left.

Unclear

A “what is the n'th element of this sequence” question without any context: math.stackexchange.com/q/4264143/42969. There is also one (accepted) answer which does not explain anything (and therefore needs some filling text). I suggest to delete both the question (1 more DV needed) and the answer.

math.stackexchange.com/questions/4255429/… This Question was closed over a week ago, it was fine, and I thought that was that. Now I learn that it has just been deleted too. Since it was already closed, is there really a need to actively target it for Deletion? Is my Answer there really worthless?

Do Delete-voters not generally look at Answers (in case there is some value) before they vote to delete questions? There are surely much worse Questions that are more deserving of Deletion, why dig up already-closed Questions?

@RyanG It was the question that was deleted, and rightly so, since it is a PSQ. I see no sign that someone thinks that there is something wrong with your answer.

@XanderHenderson re your (good) answer on Meta just now; if you're going to refer to the schoolbook division sign as "obelus" shouldn't you refer to the fraction-slash sign as "solidus"? ;-)

@postmortes I considered it. But neither "obelus" nor "solidus" is a commonly used word, so I prefer to use plain English when it makes sense. I also think that the school division sign (the obelus) should be cloaked in arcane language so that we are not tempted to use it, while the slash (the solidus) should be friendly and common.

There was a train of thought there, even if it was not made transparent in the final answer. :D

@RyanG The general consensus is that a good answer cannot save a terrible question.

That question does not meet the quality standards for the site (we know nothing of the context in which the question is being asked, nor the kinds of tools the asker might want to use), hence it was very appropriately closed. If a question is closed, that means that it is off-topic, and needs to be improved. Otherwise, it is eligible for deletion.

There is some argument to be made that a truly wonderful, groundbreaking, novel answer ought to be sufficient to prevent a question from being deleted. Would you argue that your answer is revolutionary?

@RyanG Related discussion here

Your post is linked by me in this room. I guess you did not mean that, but I did not target your question in particular: I just go through the recently closed post and suggest to delete some of them.

@RyanG To be precise, regular users cannot delete a post that is not closed.

@XanderHenderson I appreciated the choice of word :) I mostly agree with the use of the obelus being restricted to school-age as well, although that's in part because it's easier to distinguish from 1s and ls than the fraction slash when children are young and still improving motor skills

C/D

D

C/D

@XanderHenderson Understood. Another repeat of rant on metamath.se. Too much liberty taken in using their own bias to make categorical statements about "high rep users".

C/D

@Peter Ready for deletion

D

D

D1, D2, D3, D4

D5, D6, D7, D8

D9, D10

C clearly a duplicate, some decides to answer anyway.

Needs to be closed, one more close vote needed: math.stackexchange.com/questions/4264457/…

^^^Open for deletion

^^^^Gone. Thanks.

@JoséCarlosSantos Thanks for clarifying, yes I understand that my it was the Question, not my Answer, that was the deletion target; I was merely protesting that the zealousness to Delete is wise to be balanced by some consideration not to throw the baby out with the bathwater

@XanderHenderson Thanks for clarifying; my Answer isn't revolutionary, but your suggestion is ad absurdum anyway: no, the baby doesn't need to be revolutionary in order not to be thrown out with the bathwater. But of course all of this deletion/moderation work has an element of subjectivity, so it's fine.

@ArcticChar Ah, thanks for explaining the lead-up to said deletion, and for sharing a bit about the closure/deletion processes, which are in fact still rather murky to me. And thanks for sharing that old meta discussion in which, yes, Mariano has more or less taken the words out of my mouth. -)

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body (95): Designing a general function that describes pharmacodynamic data by nichi on math.SE

To be clear: my understanding & opinion is that when considering to delete Questions, it is better to err on the side of caution (baby, bathwater, blah blah). Admittedly, some of my previous Answers that were victims of parent-Question-deletion ended up being improved after I was forced/disciplined to remodel and 'rehome' them; so Deletions are generally a good thing.

This current post that I cited isn't a good example; I don't have examples at hand, but occasionally I've noticed good-quality Answers with substantial points not elsewhere on MSE, being sacrificed due to overzealous Question deletions. Thanks for reading.

@RyanG In fact, the standard is, essentially, that an answer has to be revolutionary in order to justify the retention of a terrible question. A good answer is not sufficient. If you want an answer to justify the retention of a bad question, then that answer had better provide something to the site which no other answer comes close to doing.

The question that you answered, aside from being far, far short of the site guidelines, essentially boils down to "What does 'unless' mean in mathematics?" I would be willing to bet that there are quite a few questions and answers on the website already which address the issue. Indeed the linked question in the comments seems to be asking for about the same thing.

And if you believe that your answer is worth preserving, then you have the option of either answering a duplicate question, or posting a new question and self-answering (keeping in mind, of course, that your new question needs to meet site standards).

@XanderHenderson 1. "In fact, the standard is, essentially, that an answer has to be revolutionary" Could you provide a source? 2. "have the option of either answering a duplicate question" Oh aren't duplicate questions also liable for closure; if so, why not just look for an 'approved' (whatever that means) question instead?

@RyanG I'd suggest you read carefully about the answering of very low quality posts: Enforcement of Quality Standards. In general, don't answer very poor questions as defined there unless or until the asker has improved the question. Feel free to suggest to users ways they can improve the post. But, bottom line, don't answer very poor posts while they remain poor.

"Oh aren't duplicate questions also liable for closure" I think you have missed my point. If the question is a duplicate of another question, it means that there is another question on the site which is essentially the same, but which is of sufficient quality (or age) that it is not going to be closed and/or deleted.

Basically, if a question is of low-quality, it should be deleted.

If that low-quality question is also a duplicate of another question on the site, then there exists some other question which you can answer (the duplicate target; the "original" version of that question, the "canonical" version of that question, whatever).

If that low-quality question is not a duplicate of another question, then you can consider writing a new, high-quality question which poses the same question.

@RyanG We understand about babies and bathwater, but also feel that babies shouldn't be put into very unsanitary baths.

C

@ArcticChar You didn't vtc?

@XanderHenderson Out of votes.... (thanks for dealing with it)

@XanderHenderson I did not miss your point; I misunderstood it: I had thought that, by "duplicate", you had meant the "imitation" question, but you had in fact meant the "original" question (which you were confusingly referring to as a duplicate of the imitation). Having now understood your point, yes of course this makes more sense.-)

@RyanG "is a duplicate of" is a symmetric relation.

You may hear people refer to the "duplicated" post as the target post, and others essentially like it as duplicates of the target post, just to keep straight which is which, given Xander's observation of the symmetry.

@XanderHenderson Haha yes. That's exactly what I was highlighting while pointing out why calling the original a "duplicate" was kinda confusing/misleading for me--after all, we're speaking natural language here, not Python.

@XanderHenderson "In fact, the standard is, essentially, that an answer has to be revolutionary" In the absence of a source, I can only charitably interpret this claim as at best hyperbolic, and almost certainly subjective (as opposed to essentially being an actual Rule) among community members.

I merely wanted to voice an opinion and understand slightly better how these processes work, which I have, so it's good. There is a diversity of opinions, I'm happy to agree to half-agree with some, fully agree with others. Thanks all, for your input.

@RyanG I for one appreciate your honest questions.

@amWhy Noted and agreed, even as this is somewhat orthogonal to my point that sometimes accidents happen, and baby bathwater blah blah, but yes, unsanitary blah blah. I'm sure none of us are interested to enter into any argument; certainly I would like my MSE experience to remain fun. Thanks again.

Consider deletion

cv-pls python Am I missing an underlying mathematical problem here? or is this just a programming problem? find the equation for a matplotlib plot‭ - Chat0924‭ 2021-09-30 23:14:23Z

@XanderHenderson it's a programming problem, and very unclear one at that.

@amWhy Yeah, I thought about it more, and closed it.

Happy October to @TeresaLisbon! And we're just hours away, @Xander.

Oh, is September almost over? Where did it go?!

@amWhy This has been edited, notwithstanding the meta post asking for upvotes for it. Happy October! I'm hoping I can finally put together my first paper as well by the end of this month.

@XanderHenderson I don't think I'm seen as many programming questions and answers as I have this past year.

There seems to be some misunderstanding regarding the scope of such questions on MSE.

@XanderHenderson ...tick-tock ... tick-tock ... tick-tock ...

@TeresaLisbon Yes, he's been editing persistently but he doesn't understand the concepts he's adding, deleting, etc.. Read the comment thread; he's doing everything he can to keep a question he doesn't even understand open.

Another Numberphile-related question but is probably a duplicate, it's asking if the same argument doesn't work in the countable case by adding a $1$ at the end. (Ok, I know what it means!)

@amWhy I want to see how this comes out of the review, but I agree with you. It has two reopen votes.