It seems as if OP of this question is in a rush. 'Answer your own question', by the way.

@soupless I don't understand most of the downvotes on that users questions. While pestering people to answer your questions is not good behaviour, I don't think the users mistakes should be taken out on their questions. They are actually of high quality including all the relevant definitions, and attempts.

Delete

@user400188 Yes, but there's a clear refusal to listen. I'm sorry, but your question cannot be useful if you are not willing to engage in a useful manner regarding your question. The user is desperate, absolutely desperate for only an answer, and the problem is : on their second question, an answer was given in the comments then they changed the question, and then started vandalizing their own post by adding irrelevant tags and so on. In that case ,a downvote ...

... is a sign of what any answerer/ visitor experiences when they go to that post, which is a question worth seeing and very fine by all standards, but an OP who will jump on your back if you post anything ,by the looks of it. The mistakes have to be taken out on their questions, because the questions aren't useful if they can't be discussed in a useful manner. BUT : Having said that, if someone takes the user aside and they understand the implications of their behaviour, such a post in...

... isolation is cent per cent on site , and could be worthy of up votes as well.

So far as I can tell, the body of their second question wasn't changed to a different question, the only difference between the 2 edits are tags. Do you mean to refer to the first instead?

Also, I would argue that even if an OP isn't to engage with their question in a useful manner after posting it, the question can still be useful to other people. I am referring to the times when a person googles some similar question of their own, and finds such a S.E. question as the result. For this reason I don't think the OPs social mistakes should be taken out on their question.

@user400188 I agree that the mistakes are mostly social ,and yes, only the tags were changed but even that much is vandalizing , IMO. Otherwise I don't see anything wrong in the question, unless someone finds something wrong in the attempt or in some logic somewhere in the question which I don't see. But I also see in the timeline, about 17-18 edits in the space of a day, even if minor edits...

... since edits need to be only minimal to send the question back to the hot queue, this could be a strategy for pushing the question back to the hot queue, and furthermore I see that opinion is divided on the question since the upvotes are at 3, there are 3 reopen votes. Without doubt, the social mistakes then skewed the question : I see you are thinking from the point of view of other visitors, then you are certainly correct.

I wonder what's the policy on textbook questions without any research effort from the asker that have been offered a bounty, like this one: math.stackexchange.com/q/4133600/321264.

Variants of this question have been asked and answered several times before, but people just refuse to search.

This looks like a poorly veiled exam question.

Duplicate with dupe attached.

@StubbornAtom The bounty means it cannot be closed. I think the problem with the question runs deeper than just "they didn't search". It completely lacks context and is just a Problem Statement Question.

Now, we live in a world where exams are online and people use this website to cheat at more than just calculus, so when a user posts a PSQ and then writes "Thanks for the answer. Could you please provide a more detailed answer?" I think there is a high chance that they're cheating. [Context isn't just about cheating, but I'm feeling cyclical today.]

@user1729 @StubbornAtom Correct, question lacks context from an attempt point of view. In my opinion, either a source OR an attempt is a necessity apart from others, but in this period where exams are coming thick and fast in universities, I really think people can work around that as well. And with the exams/assignments being take-home life is even more difficult. In light of that, one has to be really careful.

I'm not sure we can touch the question yet, as it's bountied, but that's just really unfortunate.

PSQ with answer in the comments, to delete.

@user1729 It came only 39 minutes ago. I think we should give some time for the OP to respond at least once. I'll keep track, if after some time (I give it 8 hours, roughly) there's no response then we can delete. It's open for deletion, though.

But yes, the comment answer is kind of putting off. I hope the comment is just about unclear so that the OP has to clarify it.

math.stackexchange.com/q/4136212/357390 close as dupe! Be like Dubuque!

@TeresaLisbon The user is not new - they have asked questions before, and have been here for over a year. I normally do not rush to delete, but this combined with the complete answer in the comments makes me want to delete.

@user1729 I see, thanks for looking into the background. You're right, in that case we delete and hammer the message in. It's now got two delete votes.

On reflection, deletion doesn't do much apart from hide the question from others. The user will still be able to see the question along with the answer, as it is their question... (I guess it maybe means that they have to check their browser history to find it though? Dunno.)

It does the worst possible, unless you want to flag the comment which gives the answer and get it deleted, on the basis that it answers a PSQ completely.

@TeresaLisbon I had actually flagged the comment, but deleting questions auto-resolves (most?) related flags. In particular, my flag on the comment is now marked as "helpful".

@TeresaLisbon My online exams this semester were Zoom-proctored, and the computing ones required screen recording with FFmpeg

Two of the seven such exams were offline, however

A bit of shameless self-advertising: I answered this question, which I believe to be a very good question: math.stackexchange.com/questions/2035418/…

My problem is that the other, most upvoted answer is at best completely lacking rigour and at worst completely wrong / making typical beginner mistakes when it comes to conditional expectations

This bothers me a bit, perhaps somebody here has an idea what's the best thing to do in such a situation

I think you can refer (politely) to the failings of the other answer: "The other answer is a nice illustration of how to think about what's going on, but I want to add some rigour...". So then a reader sees how the two answers compare.

Avoid saying the other answer is "completely wrong" in your answer (but you can comment on the other answer to point out its flaws).

@user159517 It is, isn't it? There's a small problem : the answerer of that question has been quite inactive for a long time. I like your answer, the question is fairly canonical and a duplicate target, so all in all I'm not too worried about self-advertisement.

@ParclyTaxel That is super-high security! I'll give you an example : my neighbour had to give his annual exams recently, but the host of the meeting had a poor internet connection so to keep everyone on the call they asked people to switch off their videos. Cue pandemonium, my neighbour told me he got his mother to help him. I mean, that is worse than asking MSE for help, furthermore I've heard even worse scenarios.

And offline exams, oh dear, oh dear. 24 hour take-home exams, for example, have the problem that one could actually pass a question off as a proper MSE question in 24 hours, without specifying the source.

@user1729 Yes, that was my worry, that if the question is deleted then the comment stays in place. But I believe if the user has low enough reputation then their question won't be visible to them anymore, you just get the "page not found" webpage, if I'm not wrong. The problem is that OP could have also seen the comment and just left, which is an equally bad impact.

@TeresaLisbon The offline exams were held on-campus; one lasted 2.5 hours and the other 1.5 hours

@ParclyTaxel I see, that's good enough. Over here, on-campus exams are an after thought. Even exams are an after-thought, looking at the laxity of security! But crazy things do happen here : kindergarten exams exist here! So kids who are 4,5 years old are giving exams in front of a screen. My cousin is one of them. Life is really funny.

math.stackexchange.com/questions/4136278/… is a dupe

@ParclyTaxel I am sorry:-(

math.stackexchange.com/questions/4136336/… is a poor question. Should not have been answered by a reputed user.

Dupe

Dupe again

@vitamind No, I claimed that $0^0=1$ makes sense because of $$\lim_{x\rightarrow 0+0} x^x=1$$ and someone countered that with this logic it could be claimed $\frac{0}{0}=1$. Please be more careful about such statements

One more vote needed to delete this "I am not an exam question, honest" question.

@TeresaLisbon I think any user can see their own deleted questions. It is only other people's deleted questions which are hidden from them.

@user1729 Gone!

D

@Peter The title is too much.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body (95): Differences between a Markov chain in discrete time and a Martingale? ✏️ by Manuel K on math.SE

@ParclyTaxel A large number of the faculty here are using Respondus for exams. I don't, as (1) I think that Respondus behaves in a kind of unethical manner (it roots student machines, which opens the door for malware), and (2) it is rather bandwidth intensive, and a lot of students out here don't have bandwidth.

A low quality answer

gone

C

M'kay. I've got actual work to do today. I'm off. Might be back later. Maybe not.

@Peter I was just joking, I think I made that clear. But if you don't like it, I won't do it anymore :). Sorry.

(I did not want to put you in a bad light, really. I put a :P behind the message, then wrote another message to clarify it was a joke as well as pinging you, to make sure you saw the message. Again sorry, and I can assure you it was just a misunderstanding with no bad intention.)

(Off-topic, but I found a comment from Skeptics SE: That fake clustering studies mean nothing, hell yea this site is toxic dint lie to yourselves. from [skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/50717/…)

@soupless

I've never heard that combination of words: f--- sake ??

Really? For f--- sake? You've never heard that? Wow! You learned something new!

I think it is a great phrase!

@XanderHenderson Oh, no.

The joy of language!

@Xander The Church Lady just whispered to me: "Who are you, SATAN??".

Heh.

Did you notice that "Santa" is just "Satan", rearranged?

HRM?

Could it be... SATAN!?

@XanderHenderson You can post that in a conspiracy site, if there is one

@soupless I was quoting Dana Carvey.

Oh, sorry. I was not familiar, that's why.

close this PSQ

We've got a potential sock puppet account in this chat, from a user suspended from this site.

sus

@Buraian I was not referring to you. I don't even know what "sus" means.

I think it means 'suspicious'.

@soupless Ah, thanks! That makes sense. We've been getting a lot of "never here but suddenly are users, who fail to acknowledge greetings, and user from off the chart sites coming here, and no where else on math.se????

@amWhy Wait, sorry, I didn't pick that one up.

@soupless What is that? I was saying that both this chat and the Cafe have become swamped with new users, at times. A lot of them have since left. And it strikes me as strange, because some of those I've noticed over the past few days are not even affiliated with Math.SE.

@amWhy Ok, I get it now. Thank you for explaining.

@soupless Yes, and the strange part for me, is when they are not even affiliated with math.se. I welcome all math.se users here, or in the Cafe, or anywhere on this site.

Hello @ThomasMarkov from Role playing games. Interesting that you're interested in this math.se chatroom, as well!

@amWhy lol i sit in here and flag stuff some times

I am a mathematician though

My Erdos number is 4 for sufficiently broad definitions of Erdos number.

@ThomasMarkov Glad to have you here, @Thomas!

@ThomasMarkov Seems you are doing very well on Roll Playing Games. Nice!

PSQ

PSQ Note the answerers

PSQ!

PSQ

PSQ

PSQ

c1 math.stackexchange.com/q/4136749/29335

One more downvote needed here, to open for deletion. math.stackexchange.com/q/4136784/9003

@quid I flagged this newly renamed user.

@amWhy Thank you, done exactly the same.

@TeresaLisbon Great minds think alike!

@XanderHenderson That's fine! :-)

→ 19 messages moved to Cafe and Tavern on the math.se

Groovy. Done.

(My finger was hovering on the button.)

@amWhy True. I love love love love love thinking alike.

@XanderHenderson Aha... your trigger finger? I see you're using the computer with a decent keyboard.

Yes.

I am officially in meetings, but I am more passively involved.

And I probably won't bother switching keyboards for class. Since I don't expect anyone to show up to the last day of calculus.

@XanderHenderson We all need to multitask, don't we? ;D

@amWhy It is the weekly "All College" meeting. There is little said there which directly affects me.

@XanderHenderson Oh dear, that's very sad. Nobody showing up to your class, you may as well call the moths and cockroaches out. To be fair they are occasionally more receptive than the humans that sit in class, especially the back benchers.

@XanderHenderson Yikes, like the entire faculty, or reps from every department, meet, once a week?

@amWhy The entire college. All faculty, staff, and administrators are invited.

Typical attendance is around 150.

@XanderHenderson Wow!

It is mostly the various division heads updating the college on what is going on (the president telling us that we can't go back to campus, the vice presidents updating us on what is going on in their houses, etc).

Oh, and weekly COVID numbers from the county.

@amWhy noted, thanks.

Open for deletion

→ 4 messages moved to ­Trash

→ 1 message moved to ­Trash

→ 1 message moved to ­Trash

While it can be fine to ask for reversals of decisions here, general complaints are not constructive.

@quid Note that the answerer appearing here never asked for a reversal.

asking for a reversal would have been futile

besides, I don't even want one

@Onir Great. So we're done.

done with what?

@quid You can take it from here, if you stick around for five minutes. I'm not in the mood to play games. right now.

@Onir it is not clear what the purpose of your comments is.

If you seek an honest exchange about the merits of deleting the post that might be fine, if you just want to vent, that's not.

close

How should we handle this question? Maybe a duplicate, see first comment?