Jeebus... I asked a user to clarify their hypotheses, and was told that I was being a jerk. Then the exact kind of clarification that I sought turned into a cause for concern with respect to an answer attached to that question. But, obviously, I'm the jerk for asking that questions meet some minimal standard...

@XanderHenderson Want to debox this one too? >:)

@JoséCarlosSantos Could you please explain how can you close that one as a duplicate and at the same time give an answer here which is of course covered from many others answers? I'm really interested to understand which role are you playing here. You should try to be more consistent in your behavior.

Just to help readers of the above comment, "that one" refers to the questions 3448745 Linear independence of difference of vectors which is about linear (in)dependence of the vectors $v_1-v_2,v_2-v_3,v_3-v_4,v_4-v_1$. The chosen duplicate target 478326: Is this subset linearly independent or linearly dependent? is about the vectors $\{e_1-e_2,e_2-e_3, \dots, e_n-e_1\}$.

@user When I see that a question is a duplicate, I vote to close it as such. What has this to do with this question? It is a duplicate of which question?

@user I will not answer the question about the role that I am playing here because I have no idea about what that means. Care to explain?

duplicates 2004580: If $S= \{v_1, v_2, v_3, v_4\}$ is linearly independent, then so is $T= \{v_1 − v_2, v_2 − v_3, v_3 − v_4, v_4 − v_1\}$ seems to be another duplicate of the question linked by user(gimusi). I have voted to close the older question as a duplicate of the newer one, since in the newer question the OP provided at least some context/effort.

@MartinSleziak It's closed now.

@JoséCarlosSantos The role you are playing is that you close and delete some OP according to some criteria and a the same time you answer to similar OP which, according to your previous behaviour, you should vote to close/delete. You are playing on two differnt tables. You should choose one.

@user Every time that I find a duplicate of a question, I vote to duplicate that question as a duplicate. Sometimes, I am unable to find a duplicate and sometimes it doesn't occur to me that the question might be a duplicate. It's that simple. What I never do is to suspect that a question is a duplicate, not to search for such a duplicate and then to post an answer to that question. It seems to me to be a consistent behaviour.

I stumbled across this question (math.stackexchange.com/q/2964816) while looking at the FAQ tag. Looks to me like a good candidate for deletion.

@TheSimpliFire :P

I boxed that one on purpose! :P

@Jack any suggestions?

I wrote this question and answer specifically to address questions like this one. I would like the latter to be marked as a duplicate of the former, but do not have an appropriate gold badge.

Is there someone with a gold badge who would like to help?

@JoséCarlosSantos I've lost count of the number of times I've pleaded with you to stop answering obvious dupes of FAQs. In fact - in my tags - almost always I see you answer them (usually picking cherries) rather than searching for dupes. So I heartily agree with gimusi's spot-on critique. If you wish to gain respect from your peers I highly recommend that you resist the temptation to pick cherries and instead spend some time helping with site organization.

@BillDubuque To clarify my point I'm not arguing that @JoséCarlosSantos can't answer the questions he likes to answer, I'm arguing that he should try to maintain as possible a consistent position. These fluctuation are really disturbing to me. Nothing personal anyway. Only a friendly suggestion. With you, we have opposite point of view but I recognize the consistency of your position.

@JoséCarlosSantos For example this answer of yours. Did you really think that after 8 years the site had no prior answers proving that polynomial rings are not fields? Dupes of this are of course trivial to search for. You have hundreds more like that. So I find your claims above highly disingenuous.

If you're going to answer such FAQs then you should at least attempt to add something novel. I know that is not easy for someone who almost always posts FGITW answers, but maybe you should seriously contemplate whether or not FGITW answers are useful for anything other than gaining rep.

@BillDubuque This last example of yours is a good one. Yes, I would have voted to close it as a dupe nowadays. But I posted that answer a year and a half ago!

@José Why does it matter that you posted it "a year and a half ago?". You still do likewise (did you forget the comments I left on some of your more recent answers?)

@BillDubuque Now, consider this question. As you can see, I'm the one who closed it as a duplicate. And, in this case, I knew how to answer it. I am sorry if I don't always find the duplicates, but I make an effort.

@JoséCarlosSantos I don't peruse calculus questions so I don't know what you do there. I see only your number theory and algebra answers. Maybe you try harder to organize calcullus vs those?

@BillDubuque If I search for a duplicate and I don't find one, should I not answer the question because it might be a duplicate?

@JoséCarlosSantos There are of course some questions that we know are dupes but good targets are hard to search for. In that case I can understand answering (e.g. I sometimes do so in that case if I think the existing answers leave something to be desired). But I'm not talking about hard-to-search cases.

@BillDubuque I don't remember having answered lately a question for which a duplicate was easy to find. And when I do answer a question and then it turns out that it had an easy to find duplicate, then I delete my answer. As I did in this case, as well as in this case. And my answer had an upvote.

@user Do you realize that your current username can easily lead to confusion, e.g. when someone wants to refer to you it may not be clear if they are referring to a specific "user" or to you. Choosing something less generic would avoid that.

@BillDubuque Do you think that this question is a duplicate?

^^^ above should be non-specific user

@JoséCarlosSantos Yes, I closed it

Should this question be closed as a duplicate – perhaps as one of the (perhaps more general) questions pointed out as response to my answer? I'll happily delete my answer if you think so, but I find it funny that @user complains about possible duplicates after posting an answer his/her/whateverIsCorrectNow/self.

@MartinR I strongly suspect that this question is a duplicate, but not of any of those mentioned as comments to your answer.

@MartinR The fact is that, as I can see, you always close a lot of question as duplicate. Therefore I find it funny that you give an answer to a question that of course has a lot of duplicates. Therefore you should delete it by yourself, in order to be consistent with your philosophy. Mine is only a suggestion of course. You are free to act as you prefer.

@MartinR It is obviously a duplicate and it is sad to see that two very experienced users could not resist the temptation to answer. There is no hope to organize the site if that continues

Well, I tried to point out the problem in OPs argument that “if a set has more vectors than there are entries in each vector” but again, I'll happily delete it if there is a good duplicate target.

@BillDubuque Indeed I really don't understand as it can be the case! really would appreciate more consistency from expert users here. We may have different point of view but we shouldn't play on two tables at the same time. That's my opinion. Have a nice evening. Bye

cv-pls trigonometry Duplicate How to express \cos\left(\frac{\theta}{3}\right)\cos\left(\frac{\theta}{3}\right) in terms of \cos(\theta)\cos(\theta)?‭ - Ulysse‭ 2019-11-28 21:53:58Z