CURED - 2019-08-25

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1:52 AM

Your first sentence starts out with an error. $\sqrt{4}$ is $2$, not $\pm 2$. That's a well established convention, which does not deny the fact that $4$ has two square roots. It's why you need the $\pm$ in the standard rote recital of the quadratic formula. — Ethan Bolker Aug 14 at 3:07

@RRL I find C2 borderline, because the asker already gave some (wrong) attempt in the original revision, and yet it should remain closed for too-many-questions-in-one-post (and no attempt for the second and third question).

1 hour later…

user21820

2:57 AM

@BillDubuque Worse duplicate FAQ with not even any actual attempt.

3 hours later…

user21820

5:29 AM

Can you successfully read this question? I can't. — Klangen 2 days ago

Martin Sleziak

@MartinSleziak The two questions are now merged. math.stackexchange.com/posts/3301540/revisions math.stackexchange.com/posts/1033129/revisions

user21820

D1, D2, D3.

D4, D5, D6.

D7, D8, D9.

D10, D11, D12.

D13, D14, D15.

C1, C2, C3.

C4, C5, C6.

2 hours later…

Jyrki Lahtonen

7:32 AM

An umpteenth reincarnation.

Actually I would like to hear your thoughts about one thing. Somehow I entertain a thinking that closing a question as a dupe sends a weaker signal of disproval to the answerers as well as the asker. Therefore I first check whether a question is lacking in context, and worry about it being a dupe only later.

So even when I could also apply a dupehammer, I shy away from using it when there are more severe shortcomings in a post. This has the following downsides: A) loss of speed - a dupehammer vote is an instaclosure, B) there is often less friction about dupe closures, because there is less room for differences of opinions.

On the other hand, some users are more reluctant to delete duplicates as opposed to PSQs. Or am I imagining this? Deletion is IMO important in cases like this. Deterrent.

Not ruling out the possibility that looking for the best dupe takes quite a bit more time than just observing that any answer is extremely unlikely to provide new content of permanent value. In other words, I may be somewhat lazy :-/

2 hours later…

Martin R

9:28 AM

@JyrkiLahtonen Related on meta:

Q: Closing a poor question as off-topic or as a duplicate?

Few times I've faced the following dilemma: To vote for closing a poor question as off-topic or as a duplicate of another one (sometimes equally poor)? The last example is this: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1703093/a-question-on-rings-csir-net-dec-2012?noredirect=1. Every ti...

Jyrki Lahtonen

10:00 AM

Thanks, @MartinR. And, my item B above should have been among the pros, and the OTOH... comment among the cons. I cocked up editing those parts.

Martin Sleziak

@JyrkiLahtonen According to the comment under the linked post, duplicate-closed questions are immune to roomba. (I did not know that.)

I would be hesitant to delete a duplicate, if the wording is sufficiently different to improve possibilities of searching. Sometimes duplicates can be useful..

6 hours later…

Xander Henderson

3:41 PM

@JyrkiLahtonen This is my approach, as well. First decide if the question is a well-posed and worth keeping around, then (if it is) determine if it is a duplicate.

If a question lacks context, then it should be closed. That being said, if it is a poorly asked question which is also a duplicate, I think that it can be helpful to the asker and other curious parties to provide a link to a dupe target.

1 hour later…

Xander Henderson

4:52 PM

Request for input:

Q: What is transcendental equation/function?

I looked up several sources on the internet. A transcendental equation is an equation containing a transcendental function of the variable(s) being solved for. Such equations often do not have closed-form solutions. And then transcendental function A transcendental function is an a...