@XanderHenderson Would it be right to say that context is a good way of "advertising" your question to the MSE audience? In that case, I just wonder if questions like contest questions and integrals get relatively unfair head starts, often because apart from source, there's usually no motivation (at the beginning : if there's a proof technique it's only known afterwards) , there's a lesser chance of "similar questions seen" being possible, and attempts can be wild : so OPs need to
... fit in "arbitrary" pieces of information to make their question more marketable, which then creates a rather funny conundrum, because the question alone would have been more "marketable" than the context placed around it to satisfy site standards? I'm just wondering if the only way around this is to set very high standards for contest questions (not explicitly, but as a pattern of behaviour, like with self-answered questions).
What happens with contest questions is that OPs don't feel the need to provide context because any answerers (and there are enough!) are self-motivated enough to attempt the question. I'm just asking if we can set the bar higher so that we can get a better standard of contest question, rather than the localized variants we get day-by-day which keep getting up voted. I also see a lack of canonical posts in this section.
Is this answer wrong/complicated? The question asks for the best type of space in question , while the answer doesn't even mention it.
@TeresaLisbon I am not sure that "advertising" is quite the right framework. But that might be a piece of it. An asker should be able to explain why a problem is interesting, or what motivates it.
The problem is that there are a lot of folk here who have taken or taught lower-division courses, so the context and motivation are "obvious" to them.
@XanderHenderson Good point. I feel that for questions that sort of "auto-motivate" people, like contest questions, we should start imposing slightly higher standards. In particular, I believe that a source should be near-enough mandatory.
@TeresaLisbon I agree. If nothing else, it makes things more searchable.
Someone asked a question today about some detail in one of Rudin's proofs. It was very easy to use Google to search the site, and come up with several earlier questions in which the same issue was raised.
@XanderHenderson @quid What's the duration of successive suspension periods that you employ? I'm asking because I see that it seems to be 1, then 3 days and then 7 days, and then I don't see what comes beyond that. Do EoQS-related violations take precedence over other violations, for example? I'm asking because I'm trying to see why no user I've seen for EoQS-related issues hasn't been suspended for longer than 7 days at once. Perhaps you are taking it slowly, to allow users to improve.
@amWhy Sent you a mail, I'll see you all at 4:00 IST tomorrow!
@Peter @amWhy @XanderHenderson: This answer is fatally flawed, as briefly pointed out by Shufflepants, but has gotten 5 upvotes probably from just being on the HNQ...
Not to say it is not even a mathematical answer, just one based on vague intuition and no actual mathematics...
@TeresaLisbon Therre is not set rulle. Generalrly speaking, the prrogression is 7 ddays, 30 adys, 365 ddays. We have adoptedd an iniitiial 1 dday suspension forrr EoQS, but, again, nothing is set iin stone.
@amWhy Welcome! I was wondering why the gap from 7 to 30 was so large : the problem is I feel it could be too difficult to breach that barrier, that's all, from a mod's point of view.
@vitamind Indeed, I understand. Clearly, they have multiple accounts, which explains the immediate up vote, the attempt to reopen.
The post is now deleted (most recent one). @Xander Without doubt, both the account of rama, and the account of akarth are related are owned by the same user.
@XanderHenderson Thanks, certainly you thought enough of it to link as a duplicate using mod privileges! That answer is brilliant from Arturo, the kind I'd love to give to a particular topic. I have one in mind (regarding identities for floor functions).
@amWhy Oh, darn. I meant to close that question. Y'all got there while I was distracted. You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
@XanderHenderson Yes, it is sufficiently clear. There's nothing in the help center about correctness of an answer, as far as I see, so I think it's an opinion, but a well warranted one. In practice (you may be better off asking a newer user, because I got lucky with some good first answers!) I believe what GEdgar mentioned still happens, though, because posters need to learn to contribute and they are going to stumble along the way.
I know answers can be judged merely on mathematical content, but it's also important to note that not everybody asks their first question perfectly, and therefore not everybody will answer their first perfectly as well. All I need that answer to promote is a bit more of a middle ground.
