lol what happenedto amwhy

@amWhy she has provided 0 answers. All of her rep has come from questions. Of everything ,that's my biggest issue. I dv'd the wuestion.

@DavidReed amwhy is currently suspended

Bummer. She's seemed a little irritable the past couple of days

@ZacharySelk .

hi

Hi Zach

geez ... this room is so dramatic ... I'm gonna leave now ...

PSQ; I'll note that I answered it because there was already a relatively useless answer given; I still think it is not a very good question. As always, use your judgement.

@ZacharySelk @DavidReed For what it's worth, it seems related to this post; Jack too got suspended for the same duration. Perhaps they didn't need to get suspended, but anyway let's just wait for the suspension to end. And please don't do anything to that post for now!

@user21820 Please note the author of the most upvoted post ;)

Would kind of be counter productive

@DavidReed I knew that, yep.

and I have actually already dv'd the post in support of its deletion so theres nothing else I can do

Its kind of a bummer as I'm the one that brought the post to her attention :(

I'm not going to delete or reopen it; I'll wait for the moderators to settle it.

@user21820 I don't quite get what was going on with that post or anything. I saw a ton of edits. I did close vote because at first it was a terrible question.

@ZacharySelk I can't claim to read the moderators' minds, but basically a large proportion of the edits were simply roll-backs, back and forth. Whether it's 'wrong' is not for me to say; they may both believe that their roll-back is the correct action to take.

@user21820 So weird. I know amwhy was suspended for a very long time previously too. She's interesting. I think she's a good influence on the site but yes definitely irritable at times

Initially the question was about why x^0 =1, he then changed both the title and the question itself. I had already answered, I pointed out in this chatroom that it made me look like an idiot, Xander and amWhy decided to role it back

@DavidReed Leave it to the moderators now. No point discussing further as neither of them are cranks, unlike a certain recent case...

I was just answering your/zachs speculations. That's what got it rolling. I have nothing else to say on the matter other than it is a reminder to keep the this site in perspective in the big scheme of things

I understand totally.

@DavidReed What would you do if somebody told you that thread has to go, because it's just a bad question? And the fact that perfectly fine answers will go down the drain with it has to be accepted. I accept that some things (especially wrong answers) have to be marked, corrected, and if that fails, deleted, because they can do damage. But there's a price tag, always.

@ProfessorVector There's a good alternative that has been brought up before many times on Meta and here:

In any case, if there are extremely exceptional answers I don't mind closing one eye. But almost all the time, Please-Solve-Questions do not garner anything that would be a loss to the site if deleted.

@user21820 That looks more like a workaround than a solution, for me. But that's my opinion, and you have yours, and you have more points to enforce yours, even though it's just your opinion, not the official policy of the site. Not even all moderators agree upon that, and I'm certain you know that.

@ProfessorVector The official "downvote" button includes "it is unclear or not useful".

Note also that I do not vote on a lot of posts that are mentioned here, because I must personally be able to justify it as useless before I do so. Notice that in many cases I explicitly give logical reasons for my judgements.

@user21820 Indeed, and when you can't give those, you offer evasion instead of an answer. Rmember: I'm speaking of good answers to bad questions. Can such an answer, giving a clear and understandable answer to a much misunderstood concept, be useful for other people? For me, the obvious answer is "yes".

@ProfessorVector Did you read the linked conversation carefully? The moderators are happy to move good answers to a better home.

And in fact, there is official policy that encourages "canonical answers" to frequent questions rather than lousy do-it-for-me questions.

Morning

@user21820 There's a little logic/language problem you're probably aware of: "the moderators" implies that there is consensus between them. We both know that's not true. There's even a moderator who will happily answer a bad question, because he has a brilliant answer. In one case, I had to comment that I'm unable to upvote it, because such a question doesn't deserve such an answer. So our opinions don't entirely disagree, I just draw the line in another region.

@ProfessorVector Well sorry I don't mean the moderators agree on everything. It's just a generic statement regarding the majority of the moderators.

Open for deletion

@user21820 Pinned for reviewing.

@user21820 LOL! That guy posted all of his homework. A clear case where we quite obviously agree.

=)

@ProfessorVector I think as you said we don't really disagree that much. It's just that we had chosen to focus more on what we disagreed.

@DavidReed Which version are you referring to? To me the question is not about proving x^0=1 (though the wording has been bad).

@amWhy One more vote!

@SimplyBeautifulArt My specific reason was "unclear what you're asking", though.

@ProfessorVector Both are agreeable to me.

@SimplyBeautifulArt Open for deletion.

Open for deletion.

@ProfessorVector I too had the main reason being lack of context (what are m,n?), but it's also symptomatic of lack of effort.

Sometimes, the "specific reason" appears as "This question is not about mathematics, within the scope defined in the help center", even though that's often quite obviously wrong and lets those who voted look... funny. Does anybody know when and why that happens?

@ProfessorVector Martin Sleziak indeed knows:

Suffice to say at least one voter must have voted that option otherwise it won't be displayed.

I suppose I'll let them lay their judgement.

@JohnMa Very likely the first one. The title itself to my recollection was why is x^0 = 1

@ProfessorVector I was being playful. I was the initial one to bring it in here and recommend its deletion.

@DavidReed I thought you must have replied to that version, because it would not have been a good answer, otherwise. Obviously, the OP changed it to make their (erroneous) thought more explicit: we can't have x^{1/\infty}=1, because that would imply x=1^\infty. That's a fallacy, but it's no doubt a mathematical fallacy. And that's why I'm not sure deleting is such a good idea: people should be warned of those fallacies. Ok, there are lots of those warnings, already, so it would be acceptable.

It has been changed as well since when I initially downvoted it, multiple times

The current edition I don't believe was written by the OP

I'm not going to touch it one way or the other now

other than possibly voting to delete my answer if it remains in its current form

I guess actually I don't have to vote to delete it. Thought I did, maybe that's questions

@DavidReed The current version was written as Jack and has made the error more explicit, as Professor vector suggested. Yeah the original version was bad, as the title do not really match the body of the question.

Well, I can't cast deletion votes, so that's a moot point. I could vote for reopening, but I'm not sure that's a good idea, and it's certainly a bad one as long as we don't see white smoke from the conclave of the moderators.

@ProfessorVector That's no harm to wait for some time. It could be that the mod found a duplicate and then close this one. That happens before.

@JohnMa To find a duplicate for x^0=1 wouldn't take that long, just go to that question and have a look at "related". The fallacy I described is another matter.

@ProfessorVector No, I mean finding a duplicate for "multiplying $x^{1/\infty}$ infinitely many time". I believe that is not discussed before

Ar... I mean it WAS discussed before

@JohnMa No, I can't find a reference, either.

@ProfessorVector I mean, the moderators MIGHT be able to find such a duplicate. Indeed I guess they would at least try. since that is the easiest way to settle the issue.

Easiest, yes, maybe. But asking us to do their homework is the easiestv way for some lazy students, too, now isn't it?

@ProfessorVector By settling the issue I mean the issue that two users insisted on their edit.

You can't settle that. An edit is only justified to help the OP express what they want to express (that's why a certain moderator took rather drastic steps, I'd imagine), but the OP changed their mind in the process, presumably for the reason I described above, but we can't be certain.