@amWhy Hmm... In my personal opinion, it's borderline. I am lenient as long as the asker has shown effort of some sort, since it is difficult to judge whether enough effort has been put in. The linked question actually shows that the asker already tried to express cyclicness of a group in first-order sentence over the language of groups. Since that attempt failed, the asker now asks how to solve the original question. If the asker had been lazy, he/she would have asked the original only.
How to ask a homework question.
Can I ask a homework question here?
How do I ask a homework question on this website?
What information should I include in a question about homework?
Why don't you provide a complete answer to my question?
I wish the above question "How to ask a homework question" to be changed to so that users knew that it's guidelines applied to all questions and not just homework questions. @amWhy @Did @user21820 @ChaseRyanTaylor @TrevorGunn @others
How to ask a good question.
This thread has advice on the following aspects of writing a good question on this site. Each item in this list links to an answer below about that specific aspect of question writing.
Provide context
Choose a good title
Formatting and writing
Tag your question corr...
It just bothers me that the phrasing of the first makes it objectionable. (if that's the right word to describe it)
Hm, this was deleted two years ago in the close/reopen thread. Should it be undeleted and marked as "Deleted"? (as in the linked question on main is deleted)
Heh.
Looking at some of this old stuff.
I always had a small chuckle when someone wrote a post along the lines "I need to... I got... but the correct answer is... what did I do wrong?" I always want to comment "The first thing you did wrong was not telling us what you did to get the answer you got."
Hm
There's a lot of old things I never visited after gaining the ability to see deleted posts.
This can't be made sense of. ZF certainly proves that there is some arithmetical sentence that is true in N that ZF itself cannot prove...
@amWhy But despite my earlier comment, I of course agree that nobody should edit a question to insert something that isn't obviously the intent of the asker.
@SimplyBeautifulArt @Did, @user21820, et al. PSQ answered by "DrS" and answered by MichaelR (who of course, upvoted the PSQ he answered, like he always does, whatever the quality.)
Re: ^ Only one more close vote needed to close; one more downvote needed to delete.
@SimplyBeautifulArt Yeah, I know what you mean. I've thought before about responding to the "this is not homework" with "it doesn't matter; it's good advice and you should follow it," but at that point it becomes clear to me that the person asking the question is trying their hardest to make sure their question is of the lowest possible quality.
If the question were not homework then they should be able to put more effort into writing the question. If their response to "you should improve your question" is "I don't need to improve it because it's not homework" then I'm going to downvote and leave.
That said, I think changing the title of that meta thread could be beneficial. My first thought is "How to ask homework and homework-like questions?" but I'm not a fan of the term "homework-like". Another possibility is "Why should I not copy and paste questions from my homework or textbook without additional context?"
Given a prime $p > 2$ and positive integers $x,y \le \frac{p − 1}{2}$, prove that if $x(p − x)y(p − y)$ is a perfect square, then $x = y$.
Nothing I have tried has yielded any useful progress.
@Joffan Unfortunately, it doesn't pass my minimum context requirements. I've downvoted, flagged, and starred, and I'll look it over later to undo my actions if the post has been improved.
I agree it would be nice to know what the asker has done or knows about the problem but I don't feel it's that important compared to having an interesting challenge. The downvote represents your disapproval of the poster, not sure why you would also flag it.
@Joffan Oh pft, ignore me, I never placed any flag down. The words came from someone else's fingers! I'm innocent I tell you! :D
@Joffan Perhaps it's an interesting challenge. Same holds true for many posts. But I can't judge everything based on how interesting it is, as this is fairly inconsistent, and I try to maintain a certain level of consistency.
@Joffan I agree with @SimplyBeautifulArt It's off topic. It's a problem statement question. Shows nothing in the way of effort. Asks, essentially, for someone to do their work for them. Doing that work for them, on a question like this, is problematic if that's what any potential answerer wants to do. In any case, the post should live or die on it's own merits, not the desire of someone to reopen so they can answer it.
@SimplyBeautifulArt Okay, well in the rather poor mood I'm in this afternoon, early evening, that's even a fishier motive: requesting a poor question be reopened because one's answered it. Because the question is interesting (to whom, the answerer)? Any personal interest in the vote to reopen that might cloud objectivity?
@amWhy Well, I'm not fishing for anything; I'm just interested to see if there is an attractive answer. I made some progress, and didn't fully answer it, and would like to know if there is a better approach to complete it.
So yes, if you like, I have a personal motive. But it's the same personal motive that brings me to this site at all, exploring mathematical questions.
@Joffan Thanks for clarifying. You know, you are always free to ask the question in a closed post, and including the work you did in answering, as context, with a link to the closed question, asking if anyone knows if there is a better (another) approach to complete it.
I mean that you can create a new question, using a link to and restatement of the question that was a spring-board to the question "you're" asking , include your attempt to answer it, and then highlight your question: to the effect of what you told me: "I'm just interested to see if there is an attractive answer. I made some progress, and didn't fully answer it, and would like to know if there is a better approach to complete it."
@Joffan yes. The one thing you'll want to do is to use some objective criteria when asking for "attractive answers" and even, "a better approach to complete." You may want to simply ask if there are different approaches to complete it, other than my approach... etc. Not a whole big deal for most. But there are a few users who have fast triggers on the "Based on personal opinion" reason to close, (for the mere fact that "better, more attractive" are used.
@Joffan Great! Drop off a link to it, here, when you post it!
Given a prime $p > 2$ and positive integers $x,y \le \frac{p − 1}{2}$, prove that if $x(p − x)y(p − y)$ is a perfect square, then $x = y$.
Nothing I have tried has yielded any useful progress.
