For deletion: DA, DB, DC, DD, DE, DF, DG, DH

For deletion: DI, DJ, DK, DL, DM, DN, DO, DP

D1, D2, D3.

D4, D5, D6.

D7, D8, D9.

D❶, D❷, D❸

C1, C2, C3.

C4, C5, C6.

@RRL Only DB and DC left.

@RRL DL is a notation question, so not really a bad question. In fact, I personally agree with Mark's comment and answer.

@RRL DJ=DC. Left with DK and DN and DP.

Bad PSQ

Hello guys. I wonder why you decided to delete this question: math.stackexchange.com/questions/3119318/…

I'm new to this chatroom. So, I don't know how rules work here. I think the question wasn't very bad. It seemed like an interesting question and I had invested time and effort in answering it. Also, the question itself has four votes to be reopened and it is strange that some people suddenly decide to delete it completely when there are many questions that are completely disastrous but are not even closed, let alone deleted.

Also, what does PSQ stand for?

PSQ = problem statement question

@XanderHenderson Thank you. So, was that question deleted because it was a PSQ? The OP has added relevant information in the comments that make the question complete, but I refused to add this information to their question because I thought the general policy of the website is not to change the OP's wording of a question. I strongly believe that there are better candidates for deletion than the question I linked.

Meanwhile, how is it possible to nominate a question to be undeleted? I see no option like that under the question.

Comments are ephemeral. They are not meant to contain information which is vital to understanding the question. In the case of the question you cite, it was closed for lacking context on the 20th, then deleted an hour ago (see the timeline). The asker had 4+ days to improve the question before deletion, but did not do so.

As for undeleting questions, you need (if I recall correctly) 10k+ reputation.

However, if you lack that much reputation, you can do as you have done and bring it up here, or mention it on the meta thread.

Which, as I go looking for the link, it seems you have also done.

@XanderHenderson I agree that comments are ephemeral. I can't ask the timeline because I do not have moderation privileges. However, from what I see and taking what you said into account, the question was closed on February 20th, then it was edited by the OP on February 21st to add more information. This shows that the OP didn't abandon the question and even voted for it to be reopened after editing it.

@XanderHenderson Also, since the OP is a new contributor, having posted only four questions with a reputation lower than 20 points, I think there's a good chance that the OP didn't know on their own what they should've done to improve their post and they tried their best in improving the question.

@stressedout I am not going to argue the history of the question with you. In its current state, it is not a good question, and was properly deleted (in my opinion; others may disagree).

The newness of the asker and the fact that it was edited four days before it was deleted are irrelevant to the question of whether or not the post contained enough context and was clear. It didn't and it wasn't, hence it was deleted.

It can be (convincingly) argued that there isn't enough of a feedback mechanism regarding requests for reopening; the question failed to be reopened via review on the 21st, but the asker was almost certainly not specifically notified of this outcome. I think that this is an area where the SE software could be improved. However, the fact remains that the question, in its current state, is not a good fit for MSE.

@XanderHenderson Sure. I'm not arguing. I'm just mentioning some facts. You said the OP had 4+ days to improve the question before deletion when the question was closed, and I answered that the OP has shown interest in improving the question and did try to improve it by editing it. Now whether their edit is a good improvement or not, that's another matter.

Between closure and deletion, they had five days to improve the question. They made an attempt on day 1, then seemingly abandoned the question. There is a very vocal group that believes that the time between closure and deletion is often too short, but I think that in this case, even they would admit that the OP had sufficient time to improve the question.

That said, I believe that the question can be saved just by editing it properly. However, I'm not going to try to change your mind and I respect your opinion. I just think that it's unfair that it was deleted while there are hundreds of thousands of questions that are better candidates for deletion and my answer on the question had been voted up by five people who were experienced in the real analysis tag while the answers to many of those candidates are not any better than the question.

And let's say unfortunate instead of unfair. Maybe MSE also needs to extend the duration while a comment can be edited.

@stressedout No, the comments posted by the asker still do not make the question satisfy the guidelines:

This very FAQ is linked from the sign-up page, as well as from the ask-a-question page.

And it was also linked from the close-banner since 20 feb.

It is furthermore almost surely a homework question, so the complete lack of effort on the asker's part does not help.

@stressedout As for other worse questions, please feel free to post links to them here.

@user21820 I believe the set of questions in tags like calculus, precalculus-algebra, linear-algebra that do not meet the criteria of "How to ask a good question?" and are far worse than this question is dense in all the questions asked in these three tags on the website in the sense for any question asked in these tags, you can find a question that is similar to it, only worded differently, which shows no effort and yet it hasn't been deleted.

@stressedout As I said, feel free to post links to those you feel are "far worse". Questions that do not satisfy the guidelines are candidate for deletion, but there is no automatic robot that can do the deletion so someone still needs to do it. If you notice bad questions that haven't been deleted, bring them up.

@user21820 I completely respect your decision and I trust our community. If you guys honestly think that this was a bad question that cannot be saved by editing, and it is as bad as the thousands of questions we get everyday on MSE, then that's it. I have no objection. Also, I don't know if it's ethical for me to nominate questions for being deleted because I haven't hit 10K rep yet. Is it OK if I post questions that I think should be deleted here in future?

@stressedout It's definitely the intention of this room that anyone including low-rep users can post links here for consideration of what to do. As far as I know, no regular user in this room blindly acts on requests posted here. I personally will read not just a question but also the comments to determine whether the asker has shown sufficient context according to guidelines. And you'll also find that not everyone here agrees.

@stressedout Seconding that. Speaking for myself, a nontrivial proportion of my action on items viewed here is "do nothing" because I don't agree. And there are even sometimes when I leave comments here or at a particular question giving reasons to disagree with the suggestion.

The spectre of the "robo voter" looms large on the review queues, but I feel like here, where there is no particular reward for action, mechanical voting is less incentivized, and therefore more rare.

@user21820 Thanks for the clarification. I didn't know that moderation on MSE is discussed in chat and I thought only moderators like quid or others are active here. Now that I know it's OK that I participate here, I will surely visit here more often to be informed of the community's decisions.

@stressedout I don't think that anyone said that the question was a bad question that can't be saved by editing. What I said was that the OP had ample opportunity to edit the question and improve it, but that they did not. The question required editing; it wasn't edited; it was justifiably deleted.

C'est la vie.

If you are really as attached to that particular question as you seem to be, I would invite you to create a new question where you give the best possible version of that question, then provide your answer.

@stressedout You're welcome. This chat-room is actually quite ancient, and was initiated as a room to collect a record of some moderation actions related to questions/answers. And as Xander just mentioned, you can definitely create your own question+answer pair to showcase the best possible theorem and your proof, simply citing the old PSQ as context. I'll note that Martin Sleziak (one of the regulars here) has done this quite a number of times already.

@XanderHenderson well, it's true that I was kind of emotionally attached to that particular question and I even had mentioned it in the comments long before it was closed. I might in future do so as you suggested if the OP of the mentioned question didn't edit the question to pass the criteria for the question to be undeleted. That's a good idea. Thanks.

@stressedout And happily, for the most part recently at least, disagreements tend to be civil and productive. On occasion there are some attempts to instigate toxic exchanges, but so far they haven't stuck.

@rschwieb I think it is unfortunate that sometimes we, as a community, take action against questions that is possible for us to improve them because the question itself is not of very low quality while we ignore really bad questions because they're so many that we lose count.

@stressedout Yeah, sometimes i feel the same way, that time spent bearing down on closing one question would be better spent closing four other questions. I've resolved for the most part just to leave a polite suggestion or two along those lines, and let them vote their conscience. I don't really want to waste any time changing their minds if they're really that invested in their action.

@stressedout Participate here enough constructively, and I'm sure the weight of your contributions will help us think differently about the posts you think are worth preserving.

@user21820 Thanks. I'm glad that I found this chatroom today. And thank you all for spending the time to explain to me how the things are done here.

@stressedout 👍

@stressedout: By the way, though some moderators are pingable here, the real Math Mods' Office is where you can pose any inquiries directly to the moderators. This room is focused on close/reopen/undelete/delete/edit issues. =)

@user21820 Thank you. I will save that link too. (thumbs up)

You're welcome, and thanks for participating here too.

delete 1, 2, 3, 4

@stressedout Thank you for the constructive discussion here. Taking a meta-perspective, I think part of the value of this chatroom actually lies in precisely the lengthy discussions that "are not worthwhile compared to the question at hand". Because these discussions are where people have exchanges of views. Run-of-the-mill crap is what all can recognise, but for the rest we will have to iron out a consensus over time. Which is exactly what these discussions help us to do.

del-pls ordinary-differential-equations Missing context or other details (No Roomba: accepted answer) How to solve equation $y''+y'=e^{x^2}$‭ - Wenhao Yao NEU‭ 2019-02-15 23:39:44Z

del-pls functions Missing context or other details (No Roomba) Advanced Functions Chapter 4/5‭ - Chelsea Nankisore‭ 2019-02-15 15:44:02Z

del-pls hyperbolic-functions Missing context or other details (No Roomba) How to find Cosh(0.0706+j 0.0522) hyperbolic function in scientific calculator‭ - Prateek Anandpara‭ 2019-02-15 15:15:06Z

del-pls integration Missing context or other details Complex analysis evaluating integral‭ - JacqyJacqJac‭ 2019-02-15 14:58:59Z

PSQ: math.stackexchange.com/questions/3116507/…

@stressedout Is there a reason that you linked to an answer rather than the question?

@stressedout This is one of those cases that gives me pause. Sometimes it is difficult to include context for counterexample questions, although it is not impossible. And if there's any merit to the answers, it may in fact be valuable to have them on the site. Before closing, I'd be inclined to search for duplicates and/or determine if the answers seem particuarly valuable.

→ 1 message moved to ­Trash

→ 5 messages moved to CRUDE Archive

@XanderHenderson No, I was just looking at RRL's profile who nominated two of my answers to be deleted today and I was trying to see if RRL only answers only the questions that pass all the criteria posted on "How to ask a good question". Nevertheless, the question I posted is still a PSQ (problem statement question).

@rschwieb what's the difference? They can at least discuss the motivation for the question.

@stressedout The difference is that maybe it's hard to give partial work, and maybe the answer really is involved. Giving a counterexample seems pretty self-explanatory as far as motivation. But they could have listed partial attempts, it is true. Or how they ruled out classes of examples already.

@stressedout Ideally there's a duplicate.

@stressedout you should not do that. Looking through other user profiles to find poor content and to propose them for deletion/closure is not a good idea. Please use search criteria that do not involve any particular user.

Of course that'd go the other way round too.

@quid I get the idea and I agree with you. But I am kind of suspicious whether this new trend where questions answered days ago are deleted is a good idea. Also, the problem is that they're not targeting very low quality questions, but questions that are reasonably OK.

@quid I once flagged an answer that didn't make any sense to me and I was almost 99% sure that it was at best incomplete if not wrong. They decided that it was disputed. Even though the answer didn't use MathJax, and the length and its content were of very low quality.

I think it's fair to scrutinize a user's questions asked in the past day as a whole, but yeah, going back longer makes it unambiguously targeting.

@rschwieb I'm not very optimistic about this as I said. I just lost 75 rep points today. It's not that I care about the rep points because as you can see on my profile, I usually become active for a few weeks when I have free time and then stop posting for a while when I get busy with my own exams. But I think the idea of deleting answered questions posted more than a week ago, while we have questions that ask about whether % is a constant or not upvoted more than 30 times, is weird.

Yeah, hehe

@stressedout: I find deletion candidates by searching predominantly analysis- related tags with the criteria closed:yes and duplicate:no. My lists are compiled by proceeding through the list starting two months back -- usually in reverse chronological order. I do this systematically but on occasion exercise some discretion by NOT listing a closed question that is perhaps a borderline case.

@stressedout yes, many things can happen. That depends on how people vote in the relevant queue.

There is huge fluctuation in what is and is not deleted.

Especially many things that should be deleted are not deleted.

@RRL Thank you for your explanation. In any case, do you think it's a good practice? How does this help MSE? Doesn't MSE function as a repository for math questions most of the time? I don't want it to be seen this way, but that's how it's seen by many.

@stressedout A repository in the sense that we aggregate and curate questions and answers with the intention of making them useful and searchable? I would agree with that. Any phrasing that doesn't encourage people to start punching in every exercise in their textbook and then writing an answer they already have no question about into the system.

Some people have tried to do that last thing.

@stressedout Be aware that the dominant views in this room represent only an infinitesimal fraction of the community. There are many members whose views lie on the opposite end of the spectrum, i.e. the pedagogical value of this site lies in the answers, so it is absurd to delete valuable answers because of some perceived deficiency of a question. Only a very small number of users are responsible for such destructive behavior. Don't let them sway your from what is best pedagogically.

@stressedout I would encourage you to come to your own conclusions about who does what, rather than rely on scary-sounding stories about a group that always remains unnamed.

@stressedout By all means, do make your own decisions. But beware being misled by those with extreme views who try to mislead you to believe that their destructive actions are "site policies" Nothing could be further from the truth. Don't be bullied. Stand up for what is right. The purpose of the site is disseminate mathematical knowledge - not to inhibit such. Never forget that.

@BillDubuque I also believe that this behavior is not constructive and it's probably something done beyond the laws of stack exchange. When you flag an answer, it has five options: 1- spam, 2- rude or abusive, 3- not an answer, 4- very low quality, 5- in need of moderator intervention. Many of the answers that are deleted because of this new trend do not fit in any of these categories.

@stressedout The answers are deleted because the questions are deleted. The questions are deleted because they were closed. (And any closed question, with very few exceptions, is eligible for deletion.) "Lack of context" is a reason for closure.

@BillDubuque The options for flagging a question is even fewer. 1- spam, 2- rude or abusive, 3- in need of moderator intervention.

It is fine to have differing views on this and @BillDubuque is right that the views are mixed and this room is not really representative. However, it is policy of the site that such questions can be closed and deleted.

@quid Why do we have to delete questions that have been closed? Is MSE running out of space on their web servers? And if so, why don't we have clear guidelines on this and it seems to be done based on criteria that are not very precise or clear?

@quid Every question is capable of being closed and deleted. So what is your point? That such capabilities exits does not mean it is right to abuse them.

@BillDubuque the use of "can" is arguably sloppy but I think common. Somebody voting to close and to delete such questions is fully operating within the rules of the site.

@quid Very weak argument.

This is not at all an abuse. This behavior is encouraged.

@quid That's your personal opinion

@quid encouraged by whom? That's the real question.

@BillDubuque it's not only my personal opinion.

It might not be the unanimous view, but it is an established view.

@quid As you surely know, there are quite diverse views on these matters.

By contrast, answering any and all questions is not considered as acceptable behavior. This can result in suspensions.

@quid Please refrain from using false and misleading terms like "established"

@quid Absolute nonsense. Anyone is free to answer any question they desire.

@BillDubuque as a matter of fact we do suspend users for this.

Everybody is free to do it, until they overdo it and get suspended.

@quid Then that is a grave abuse of moderator power. Can you please provide further details so I can report this to the SE team.

@BillDubuque as you know very well, no I cannot share details about specific suspensions. You could report it in general terms though. If SE cares they know how to contact me and I can provide details to them. (Usually they are in the loop though.)

@stressedout did you study the close reasons, especially the one about "context". Questions that should be closed, should not be answered.

@quid what's your take on questions like this: math.stackexchange.com/questions/3116417/…

@quid Of course it is highly subjective opinion about "what should be closed" and "what should be answered".

@BillDubuque sure.

@quid it's a duplicate. Very similar questions had been asked 3 years ago.

Many things are subjective.

That does not mean that no actions are taken.

@quid So you think that you have the power to force your personal opinion on others? That's almost dictatorial. Is that how you wish to be perceived?

Users shouild always be free to choose what questions they desire to answer.

@BillDubuque we discussed that already. Anyway, since moderators are elected, if anybody has legitimization to speak on behalf of the community it's moderators.

Please stay focused on the specific issue.

@BillDubuque for the most part that is the case. However users should not be allowed to persist in behavior that is found to be detrimental to the well-being of the site. (If you were to ask found by whom, the answer is by the moderator team.)

If you start telling users that they can't answers questions they like then you aren't going to have many users left. Let the community decide with votes as per site design

@quid you didn't tell me what you thought about the question I linked.

@stressedout it's a simple but well-presented question. I assume it's a duplicate, yes. Obviously it got voted out of proportion. But the question is a good one (even though a simple one). It's a good example against claims that simple questions have no chance.

@quid well, if it's a duplicate, which it is, why hasn't it been closed yet?

@stressedout you can vote to close it as a duplicate. Why do you ask me?

Don't first complain about dictatorial moderators, and then complain about moderator inaction.

@stressedout That question was surely on the Hot List. That usually skews everything, so it may not be the best post to use as an example.

@quid My point wasn't that I could vote for it to be closed or not, I'm just showing you examples that show that our rules are not applied homogeneously.

@BillDubuque Yes. Someone brought this question up on this post in meta: math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/29834/…

@stressedout yes I said that pretty much at the start of this conversation.

To some extent, I think of closing and deleting a bit like ticket controls in public transport. If they are sufficiently frequent, they have some impact.

If you ride the bus today without ticket and run into a ticket control, while your friend used the same bus yesterday and did not, then that's bad luck for you, but does not mean that the ticket control system is useless or unfair.

Tell your friend about it and next time both of you buy a ticket.

Sure, you are also free to keep riding the bus without ticket, but there might be some consequences.

@quid To be sure. I was pleasantly surprised from what I saw of your mod actions. But I am deeply disappointed by what you wrote above. That is far too much on the dictatorial end of the spectrum. I doubt there would be much community support for such extreme actions.

@quid That's an interesting point of view. However, there's a difference. If my friend didn't run into trouble and I reported my friend to the authorities, I doubt that they would give him a ticket for something that has happened in the past. So, your logic doesn't quite apply to this situation.

Unless they were very, very extreme cases involving other matters too.

@stressedout for a bus ticket, yes. Not last because it'll be hard to prove (likely also other reasons depending on the legal system but we digress.) Yet for a tax-declaration it could already be different.

@BillDubuque if you are talking about the suspension for answering, usually there'll also be a problem with the quality of the answers. It also has to be a long running/high-volume pattern.

@stressedout Part of the problem there is that there aren't enough folks working on dupe closure in that tag (calculus/real analysis - the largest by far). This is where most of the cherry pickers get most of their rep (including many of the highest rep users). Alas, gamification encourages that behavior.

@BillDubuque therefore we need to close and delete to counter that a bit. Right? :-)

@quid For dupes with dupe answers, I agree. Otherwise, not necessarily so.

Since I should be doing something else right now, I'll take this partial agreement as a good point to leave. See y'all.

@quid it turns out that the question I mentioned earlier, not only is a duplicate, but some of the answers posted there are duplicate answers. Now go figure why it's still there and is not a candidate for being deleted. I don't support deleting it though, I'm just using it as an example.

@stressedout well you still did not vote on it either. Usually, moderators do not front-run such thing, not last because various users do not like it if moderators get too involved in such things and rather prefer if users voting determines what happens.

@quid Ok, so maybe it is not as bad as I surmised from what little was written above. That's good to know.

@quid well, I was suggesting it for deletion, according to your stated policies. I can't vote for questions to be deleted because my rep is lower than 10K. But because you insisted, I voted for it to be closed.

@stressedout before a question can be deleted, it must be closed. (Except if a mod deletes it, but we usually do not do this, especially not in such cases.)

@quid OK. Thanks for the information. I learned a lot about the current policies on MSE today and now I know better how things work here. I got a little bit disappointed or maybe discouraged, but as Xander said, c'est la vie.

@stressedout you are welcome. I think the other parts of what Xander said are also useful. If you are a bit circumspect in which questions you answer you can side-step most problems. Also for the current case, the advice you got on meta to simply record the content otherwise is I think good. If you create the question, we could even move your original answer.

@quid Yeah. Thanks. I usually don't read or answer calculus questions, because most of them are not interesting and add nothing to my knowledge. This is why only 10% of my posts fall into the calculus category. Now it seems that I should stop answering questions in the real-analysis tag too. I will probably focus on other tags where questions are less likely to be closed or deleted.

@stressedout the most important criterion is if there is some context. True, in practice the tag also plays a role, but mostly it's about context.

@stressedout Beware being misled by extreme views period. Even if those views that warn you of bogeymen and dress up in pretty ideals. Attempting to make users feel that they are under attack from an unnamed group is divisive, toxic, and contrary to the spirit of the room (and I think to the site, and all of stackexchange, for that matter.) Please bear it in mind as you go along, and we'll hopefully have discussions about it in the future.

@rschwieb Indeed, destroying pedagogically valuable answers due to some contrived deficiency of the question surely is "divisive, toxic, and contrary to the spirit of" mathematical education. Thanks for emphasizing that.

@BillDubuque Users should always be free to choose which questions they vote to close and/or delete.

Both are within the possibilities that the site provides, which by your logic means that we can use them.

And there should be policies governing both.

Of course there is - and has always been - a very wide spectrum of opinions on site "policies". My view has always been that we should strive to work together to create constructive compromises. Alas, that's not easy to do when some folks constantly engage in ad hominem attacks on their political opponents (e.g. calling them "toxic" as above)

ROs: Version 3.2.0 of the Request Archiver has been released (GitHub) (install). It adds support for the Archiver scan in CRUDE, CRCQR, and The Tavern, along with various other improvements and bug fixes. You should find two additional buttons "archiver" and "scan 3k" next to the chat input area. Scanning is based on # of messages. "scan 3k" scans back 3000 messages from current.

The Archiver scan will automatically detect completed or expired requests/SD reports/some bot messages, and show them in a popup. You can then choose to move all of them to CRUDE Archive, and/or exclude specific messages prior to moving them.

There's also a "manual move list" to which you can add messages by selecting them in chat, transcripts, search, and user pages and clicking on the + (or - to remove) to add them to the manual move list. You can then select to move them to the preset rooms of: CRUDE Archive, Trash, or Private Trash (for grossly offensive content; viewable by moderators only). The Archiver also allows ROs to see deleted messages in chat and the transcript on mouse hover, or click the 👁 to toggle.

@Lord_Farin ^

For the manual move list, the * in the in-message meta info clears the list. U re-selects the list of messages which you just moved, which can then be manually moved back to the room you just moved them from, which is basically "undo". These controls are in the meta information displayed within each message when hovered. If you need them to not be displayed (e.g. in order to click a link at the end of a message), you can press and hold the Caps Lock key.