CURED - 2021-05-03

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Paramanand Singh

1:14 AM

close this PSQ

2:04 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of answer (34): Probability in game loot by edd on math.SE

Paramanand Singh

2:22 AM

close this PSQ

@TeresaLisbon That PSQ is up for deletion now.

2 hours later…

4:46 AM

PSQ

1 hour later…

Paramanand Singh

6:10 AM

this came in review audit which I failed. I could not make any sense of it (it may be due to my lack of expertise). Any feedback on this is welcome.

Downvote and delete

Close PSQ

6:30 AM

@ParamanandSingh I'm very far from a category theory expert myself, but the question is one I would leave open as it's clearly technical and the writer knows what they're talking about and asking. Adding more details would be a nice-to-have, but I think most potential readers of that question would already know them. However, the self-answer would be better if it wasn't really link-only.

@postmortes @ParamanandSingh Agreed, if anything I think the user should take permission from the answerer on overflow and paraphrase the MO answer onto MSE (not copy-paste). I don't have a big problem with the question, and seeing the user's short but informative history I see they know what they are talking about. I don't think the question is close-worthy.

Paramanand Singh

7:18 AM

Thanks for feedback @postmortes @TeresaLisbon. I had not given any vote on the question. Let it remain open.

8:16 AM

@ParamanandSingh I still feel that questions that should appear in the queue should be unequivocally off the site or on the site. That question is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum , perhaps closer to being on site than off. Anyway, we will keep having these clangers every now and again!

1 hour later…

9:21 AM

@TeresaLisbon Sam OT has explained their stance in a follow-up comment now:

One asks for a least upper bound on a specific question. The other speaks very generally without even saying what the upper bound in question is. Sure, the OP could have searched for the question number. But that is meta information on the question. Merely searching for the question itself will not necessarily bring up this example. Moreover, the notation used is quite different---here $q = 2/(p+2)$ but there $q$ appears to be something else and $x = 2/(p+2)$. Knowing and understanding the answer, the questions are clearly the same. But "duplicate" doesn't mean "there exists an equivalence" :) — Sam OT 10 mins ago

@MartinR @ParamanandSingh Just pinging to keep you in the loop, too.

9:49 AM

@TheAmplitwist Thanks! I'll take a look.

@TeresaLisbon I would guess that these questions are chosen automatically. In this case, the question had 5 upvotes, so the system thinks that it is a "good" question

@supinf Ah yes, you are correct that the system chooses them automatically, but votes as we know aren't unfortunately the ultimate indication of how good the question is for the site.

4 hours later…

1:41 PM

A PSQ, please.

2:17 PM

Posted notice to answerer here, and flagged, @TeresaLisbon

Please vote to delete the two answers to the PSQ here, and vote to close the question, as well.

Xander Henderson

@ParamanandSingh That looks like a high-level PSQ to me.

I think that the fact that it is category theory likely explains the upvotes.

@amWhy Regarding your question, it's not me. I've been doing literally nothing with the site recently. I just have this window open.

2:33 PM

@MattSamuel Then I need to apologize to you. You are more than welcome here.

2:53 PM

@ParamanandSingh Just to note, when I run into clear cut PSQs used in audits which I fail if I vote to close it or reopen it, I downvote the post, and cast a downvote on it, to remove it from future use as an audit question. I understand in this case, you weren't clear what to make of the audit failure. I have since rendered that post ineligible as a future audit post.

2

3:32 PM

Please close: CA, CB, CC, CD

On CA, @RRL, I dv'd, voted to close, and commented below each repeat answerer.

@amWhy We can think of a reopening here now, there has been an improving edit. But I'm still a little on the edge, perhaps it is my own bias : when you know that the RHS is a series, why would you calculate the anti-derivative and then look to work from there? The geometric series should have hit straight away. But yes, that's probably a bias

Having said that : we can try to delete the answer.

@TeresaLisbon Voted to reopen question, voted to delete answer.

@TeresaLisbon Look who answered this PSQ?

José Carlos Santos

3:52 PM

@amWhy I do not agree that a question about why a certain definition is used when a simpler one seems to work is a PSQ. Actually, it seems to me that those questions often are a sign of an inquiring mind.

@amWhy (Replying to both) Repeated action on post to be reopened , and @JoséCarlosSantos inquiring mind or not, the question had no context. We still have to be careful. One good comment could have done the job.

Paramanand Singh

I can see such incidents are part of human nature. Inspite of strictest discipline one may fail to adhere to one's own rules in some cases. Such incidents if rare are not a problem at all.

However one must take note of these rare occasions

Both answers on this closed question are gone and deletion is possible : is it better or should we leave an improvement comment? The question is only 2 hours old.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] No whitespace in title, repeating characters in title (136): aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ✏️ by Delight on math.SE

@ParamanandSingh Precisely; on occasion, we each may lapse. But some users have old habits they've worked hard to change, and the sooner a lapse is spotted, the better. Jose and I have kept each other in line, in that respect, to some extent.

4:06 PM

@TeresaLisbon Is the improper integral question really missing context though? This might be an edge case, but I thought when asking about an alternative definition, providing the standard definition and pointing out the difference is enough context.

@ElliotYu What is the source of the alternative definition? (Or What is the source of each definition, and what level of study is the OP at? Is this Calc II, Real Analysis, blah blah... because answers very upon level. Context does not require "work", but at the very least, background info so we can better understand the level of the asker, and the sources from which the question emerges.

@ElliotYu I don't think enough was done to point out the difference. Which book had the definition? Does it really change the improper integral?(As an attempt) What was the user's reason for wanting to have $\epsilon$s on either side? (These are just examples) I don't think it's borderline.

to me this raises the spectre of when it's OK to post a comment that's basically an answer. some people seem not to like that and i have heard views on both sides. i did like that somebody noted it was a duplicate.

@leslietownes My take on this , in the specific case that the question is currently fit to be closed, is that comments can be used as long as they don't fully answer the question. It is possible that sometimes I write a hint and the author says : "got it, thanks!" , and I don't mind that because I know somewhere that my hint wasn't an answer by itself, but complete answers to closed questions shouldn't appear as comments either.

In the case that the question is good and on site, I think an answer is better, unless there's the case of a verification question or something, where you just have a "yes" to say or something, and there I prefer to comment.

@leslietownes Indeed. It can be confusing. Some comments are more helpful as hints than many "hint" answers. But as you mention duplicates, that's a huge component of the new Enforcement of Quality Standards. I have yet to see habitual PSQ/VLQ answerers in general, attempting in comments, to assist an asker to clarify their question, to add this nugget or that nugget of context, nor to search for dupes, all before answering.

2

4:17 PM

that was to me an obvious dupe, too, fairly amenable to search terms.

José Carlos Santos

@leslietownes I agree with you. I should have searched for a dupe.

@leslietownes Also, I don't see it as much any more, but when a comment is written that leads an OP to an "aha!!* moment, other users, even the askers themselves, would encourage the commenter to expand the comment in an answer, lest the post go as "unanswered." But come to think of it, I don't much see that sort of sportsmanship as much anymore, where users encourage other users to proceed with an answer, or to answer with attribution to a commenter.

@amWhy @TeresaLisbon Okay I agree level of background is helpful context. But I'm not sure "what's the user's reason to want this definition" is absolutely necessary. If they answered "I'm just curious", then that would have answered the motivation question, yet not improving the question much. Still, I don't think the question counts as having no context. Namely, it fits the "give definition" type of context.

i may be thinking that only because i have seen the problem before several times. it was certainly a dupe to my brain. :)

Though I'll admit that I'm not terribly attached to this particular question, considering it is a duplicate and already flagged as such.

4:23 PM

@ElliotYu I don't think I included motivation requirements as context for this question. You need to understand that posts like the Meta Math Post: How to ask a good question, are aiming at addressing each and every type of question. There is no "give definition", nor any, "what is the difference between these different defintions," free pass. I suggested: sources of each definition, and context of study (class level/user level). There are to many "Guess what answer will work" questions.

@amWhy Yes I know you didn't. It was a double reply, the other comment I replied to talked about motivation.

c1, c2, c3, c4

@ElliotYu No problem, as I wrote my reply, I figured out as much. I'd rather not think of context as a checklist that must be met, more like if there is a claim of having tried but it didn't work: "show us".... Or a definition question, the most natural question is to ask: where did you learn this definition?.... "I'm clueless, I really don't know where to start: start with your math level, class, source of exercise or topics recently covered in the text, or in lecture....If nothing else,

...to help the user connect the question with what they've been learning. Anyway, I think we're on the same page, for the most part! ;D

I guess it's just that in my mind there's a range from "bad question, don't answer" and "not great, but passable", and while the former should be closed and possibly improved, the latter are okay to leave up and answer. Maybe the idea is that "not great" questions should also be closed and encouraged to improve?

Anyway I'll let this question go for a bit, since it's moot for the improper integral post. If another post ever comes up and I feel it falls in the "not great but passable" territory, then I might try to clarify my thoughts with it as an example.

4:48 PM

@ElliotYu That'd be great. I've been reviewing post, someone similarly, (especially "first posts"), which is in part a response from a former/somewhat current trend in so much crap posted as questions, and answered, that playing "triage", I've tried to address posts that are "worst offender"... So I think we all work within a range you describe, (where passable/acceptable may vary from person to person) and the range, may at times be relative to the quality of site at that point in time.

is possible behind the scenes to analyze how people are referred to math.se in the first place? the server must sometimes get referrer urls. not for any prophylactic purpose but for figuring out why sometimes it's more of a swarm of 'just do this' first users than others.

it sort of surprises me that a lot of the super lazy people even find the site in the first place. nobody would have been doing that when i was teaching, and the site existed then.

they had yahoo answers for that. maybe i just answered my own question.

@leslietownes That would be incredibly useful. But note that math questions typed into the google search line get frequent hits on math.se. I've tried it out myself. And it is, seriously, more effective of a search than is SE's search engine. E.g., when searching for dupes.

2

improvements in both google search and its ability to sync with the contents of websites probably explain it.

And in addition to math.se, there is Quora, Yahoo Help, Chegg (which requires students pay up for access to uploads of former tests from many institutions, collections of solutions to frequently used texts, where answerers are rewarded with credits toward tangible benefits, other than fake internet post. Henno Bransma came from a Canadian list-serv.... etc. etc. And I only undertook all this research in 2013. I cannot imagine how widespread the market is for homework help, solutions, etc.

Closed question to be downvoted and deleted

(If anybody seeks to improve question, please still delete the answer)

PSQ

PSQ

This answer is not an answer, it seems

5:14 PM

that last could be a language issue. i can film a mental image of an approach from that, although it wouldn't surprise me if someone searching for this result couldn't.

@leslietownes Can you refer to the question? I'm having trouble seeing which result it is, since my last post was on a wrong answer.

and it's a dupe.

i was looking at math.stackexchange.com/questions/4125707/… . it doesn't really talk about the order properties it's using.

How could this completely opinion-based post get so many upvotes ?

too wide of a scope of an audience. opinion based quotes with sufficient focus on what the opinion can draw from don't bother me. common one being 'what is the 'right' way to look at [an object], it doesn't do X or Y, so those can't be right.'

C/D

5:19 PM

used to see a lot of that on MO. people usually respond with theorems and not just whatevers on their mind that day.

D

@leslietownes Right, but I think once again the answerer should have clarified that, and the answerer hasn't even continued the attempt, it's just been called long and useless. I think that warrants an explanation.

That answer is now up for deletion.

Find a duplicate of this

I'm really burned out right now, by the unchallenged, never meeting consequences, revenge voters on this site, so I will depart for know, because I am not a cynical person by nature, and if need be, I'll leave this site, if I start leaning that direction. You are all welcome to notice or ask, if you find me dominated by cynicism, especially you, @Teresa, and you, @Paramanand!

@amWhy We are turning the tide! The revenge voters will be taken care of. Take a day or three off, and we will cover. But don't leave. Please! We will do this together. The suspensions haven't even started, they will come think and fast.

Once again, if you have received replies on any posts, please post it here and ask people to flag.

We are with you. You are not alone, @amWhy. But take a break.

If you need to.

6:03 PM

Dear users: just some useful pointers that I think will help everyone here keep stress to minimum levels.

1. Do not chase users around when they are breaking the rules of the site: **flag and move on**. By this I mean: if you already talked with them and the behavior did not change, do not rinse and repeat. Chasing users will *always* lead to sour situations we all want to avoid.

2. If you want to remind people of the new rules in meta, do so *without* issuing any judgement (i.e. do not say "you have violated this and that rule"). Publicly calling out people like this will *usually* lead …

Xander Henderson

6:17 PM

@JoséCarlosSantos Whether or not we agree that this question is a PSQ, it is definitely a duplicate. Indicating as much is desirable, and answering duplicate questions is not really okay.

6:46 PM

@PedroTamaroff If we don't chase a user, how do we expect to bring to you the frequency and severity of their answering? Perhaps we can flag every time, but a flag seems to be related to how an answer relates to its question, not to other answers by the same user. So I'm reluctant to flag. I also don't understand why we are trying to avoid these rows and unpleasantness, when we know that we are on the side of things that you, the moderators apparently have a consensus on. How am I supposed to ...

What do you think of this question? A part of it is interesting and I'd like see and read answers but unfortunately a big part is also opinion-based in the sense that a part of a potential answer would not help the majority of users (for example: how much have you struggled with math in high shool/college etc.) (Perhaps I should add that I'm not planning on closing it.)

José Carlos Santos

@XanderHenderson I fully agree and wrote it here.

be giving a user feedback regarding their repeated behaviour, in that case? Well, I think I'll put it this way : I will follow your rules and trust you, but I will keep a separate track of certain statistics I wish to as well, and I will report to you on this @PedroTamaroff if you need me to : because I wish to know how severely a certain user is responding.

I am very, extremely happy that the moderators have taken a consensus regarding PSQ answering, but I think for that you need to empower the people that is trying to help you more than that part of the site whose contributions are : "not good for the site as a whole". Instructions that say what we can do , would then be appreciated as well.

@vitamind without knowing the rules of other sites, it seems like an interesting question for another stack. isn't there an educators site? or even academia. people there may have studied this stuff.

2

@leslietownes I had the same thought. Please post a comment under the post.

6:52 PM

D1, D2, D3, D4

D5, D6, D7, D8

D9, D10, D11, D12

@vitamind I think it's either opinion-based or off-topic. OP claims that it's not opinion-based because it's about specific experiences of mathematicians, which means that it's not about mathematics but about mathematicians or their milieu. If we interpret OP's question as being about generalizations regarding difficulty of mathematical disciplines (disregarding their declaration otherwise), then it would be opinion based.

I'm feeling very good : after a long time someone has downvoted one of my answers, and for a bonus another one as well. So good to know someone conflicts with me.

Xander Henderson

@JoséCarlosSantos Apologies. I did not see that reply.

Honestly I think it might be a question for reddit... r/math has plenty of these posts, and are reasonably well-frequented by (working-ish) mathematicians.

It could be a math education reference request. it's asks for references at the end, that could be something in the education literature. it's probably just going to get a lot of random stories.

my wife goes to departmental meetings sometime where people discuss the latest research on educational attainment, differences among groups and retention rates. i think there is also literature on educating 'gifted' children or encouraging math talent young.

cool question for somebody.

7:53 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer (88): For every $n\in\mathbb{N}$, is there a unitary matrix $V$ s.t. every minor of $V$ is nonzero? ✏️ by kadoodle on math.SE

they wrote the beginning of a real answer and maybe caught a goof and don't want people to see it while they fix something wrong with it. i do not endorse this tactic. but maybe the universe will heal on its own.

8:21 PM

@TeresaLisbon

1. "If we don't chase a user, how do we expect to bring to you the frequency and severity of their answering?"

You are not supposed to be doing this, that is the job of moderators to bring up among the team members, not users.

2. "I also don't understand why we are trying to avoid these rows and unpleasantness, when we know that we are on the side of things that you, the moderators apparently have a consensus on."

The ends do not justify the means. It is not your duty to chase users or keep tabs on their behaviour, and I strongly encourage you *not* to do this.

Hope this helps!

@PedroTamaroff So the consensus on the matter is that I'm thinking of doing a lot of things I should not be doing! Thanks for your prompt reply, and I'm sorry if at all I appeared rude. I still had one question : I see a bad reply to my request to someone to read the rules, I flag. But then I just feel bad because I'm not able to reply to the user, despite having a counterargument. I hope the moderators will send a notice, but apart from merely attaching the meta thread, who is going to...

... carry the mantle of discussing with the user why their action was wrong? I usually replied to threads because I wanted to make sure I could clear people's concerns around the enforcement and what their stances were regarding it. Some of them had abuse and there were fair points as well occasionally. I don't know, I think everybody deserves an answer when they ask for it politely, and I don't want to cut conversation with a user who politely declines my request, I'd want to know why they...

... behave like that, almost in a detective-like fashion, and see if I can get rid of the underlying concerns the user had. On a couple of occasions this conversation helped. I hope the moderators will be able to help those who are skeptical , rather than isolate them by cutting off the comment thread, but I have trust this will occur : once again, fully behind you guys, but will keep being a little pushy like this!

சேரி பா, ஏதோ நல்லது சொல்லிடு போய்ட்டார் இந்த moderator! கிளம்பறேன் , நண்பர்கள். கவனமாக இருங்க!

9:02 PM

@PedroTamaroff I have not been doing that, dear @PedroTamaroff I follow posts (questions) coming up in the review queue, that are PSQs and/or Very Low Quality: then I click on those posts, to comment to the answerers. It's NOT MY FAULT that a half dozen users answer 70% of the posts on MSE that are PSQs and VLQ posts. Please spend more time chasing the answering abusers, instead of punishing users like me who click on a post in review if and only if it's very poor. You have been behaving far more

5

@Pedro For example you wrote:

"You are not supposed to be doing this, that is the job of moderators to bring up among the team members, not users. "

That is confontational in tone, and users are not to call out users in public. (Sound familiar?).

@PedroTamaroff Thank you for this explanation. For me, the phrase "If you encounter a user who consistently answers low-quality questions over a significant period of time, and polite references to this post do not seem to be helping, [...]" suggests that it would be helpful if I remember which users where the offenders, but I should not systematically go through a users answers so I can comment on all their faulty answers. Is my understanding correct here?

4

"The ends do not justify the means. It is not your duty to chase users or keep tabs on their behaviour, and I strongly encourage you not to do this."

@amWhy I think the "gaslighting" allegation is a bit harsh here, but I wanted some clarification. Given how much you do, I am not surprised that you notice repeated offenders without explicitly looking for them.

9:20 PM

@supinf Yes, compare to going through a user's posts to find bad ones to downvote. Even if they are bad, this is targeted downvoting. In the same vein, do not "target" users with messages like the above.

@supinf Yes, I just wish @Pedro would start putting responsibility on the unavoidable chronic answerers.

Sigh.

Anyways, goodbye.

@amWhy maybe you should become a candidate for the next moderator elections ;)

1 hour later…

10:47 PM

@supinf My point is that Pedro is telling us the opposite of the what the knew policy promotes, and him doing that is damning us for following suggestions of the new policy. He'd be more honest to say: "I don't agree with it, or I agree only grudgingly", and refrain from violating the spirit of the new policy, by misinforming us or accusing us of what neither you nor I are doing.

Paramanand Singh

11:00 PM

@amWhy: the only way out to counter the effects of "burning down" and "revenge voting" is to remind ourselves of the true reason of engaging in this site: interest in mathematics. All the other activities including any cleanup done via reviews or this room are related to that.

Regarding the discussions about chasing users (initiated by @PedroTamaroff), I just want to say that no one is really chasing them. Some of the users quite frequently pop us as answerers of questions coming in review queues. I rarely if ever visit the profile of PSQ answerers.

@ParamanandSingh Indeed. Spoken with wisdom. Thanks. I sort of wish upon entering this site, we had a "leave your egos at the door" sign. Not literally, but it would be a good reminder.

@ParamanandSingh I agree, and that's what I tried to convey to Pedro. We cannot help seeing some answerers who show up repeatedly, as answerers to some of the worst questions posted.

Paramanand Singh

@amWhy: just to clarify. All this is coming out in middle of my sleep. So if you find anything wrong or typos please ignore.

@ParamanandSingh You are incredibly lucid, even in the middle of your sleep! :-)

Paramanand Singh

this is a case where the discussion in comments led to an improvement in question. I had initially given a close vote and retracted later.

Sharing such examples as above may also bring some optimism back.

@ParamanandSingh Yes you are right. It is an excellent model/example. I wish we had more posts on meta, emphasizing examples of excellent questions, greatly improved questions, even in a "before asker edited", "after asker edited", to give concrete examples of how to improve posts. That's an excellent point you bring up!

Paramanand Singh

11:14 PM

@amWhy: mostly we see examples of PSQs or even worse being listed in this chatroom for closure/deletion. So even one example of positive behavior in a day or two is like fresh air. And who doesn't need fresh air (especially in these times when people are mostly working from closed confines of their homes).

In the above case I got lucky. Somehow that question was not targeted by FGITW

@ParamanandSingh Indeed! And I have to admit, given limited votes overall (dvs/uvs) I tend to use them on poor posts. Earlier on in my career here, I tried to split my votes evenly between up and down votes. But it seems like this site has been in crisis mode for a year and a half now... and I seem to spend so much time on "triage".

Paramanand Singh

@amWhy: I don't know when we can come out of that crisis mode (it is aggravated now because of online classes), but need to keep trying.

@ParamanandSingh Indeed! I'm hoping, in the long run, the new policy will afford us more time before answers, or at least before some answers, and allow for more encouragement askers to improve a post... and reward them when they really do. But I learned today there is still resistance from some mods, so part of the implementation of the policy depends on who handles (or doesn't handle) flags, including flags from indignant answerers of poor posts.

Paramanand Singh

@amWhy: I have already seen differences of opinion among mods in this chatroom. But I think an official policy must be respected by everyone in mod team.

After all a policy (via meta post) is made by first having alignment over "common minimum programme".

11:30 PM

@ParamanandSingh Indeed.

I am quickly fading, @ParamanandSingh, I was up way too early this morning, and fading quickly right now!

Paramanand Singh

No problem. Please take rest/sleep @amWhy. Bye and take care.

@ParamanandSingh Sure will! Thanks!

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May '213

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