@BillDubuque @ParclyTaxel @ArcticChar @RRL @TheSimpliFire: You might be interested in this suggested moderator election question, which would tell us whether the candidate would be willing to help get rid of nonsense that are 'sincere attempts to answer'.
@Peter Wow 6 upvotes but no evidence of any attempts.
@JitendraSingh It has since been improved, though I don't think the added stuff amounts to much effort.
@TheSimpliFire Maybe, but that's not the focus of that question anyway.
I mention it here because current moderators tend to avoid using their deletion votes even for clear-cut wrong answers, making it a problem that normal users can't solve (there just aren't enough users who care). And the final question list will come from only the top 8 suggestions.
@user21820 It's good to have on the list but I like user1729's suggestion.
I don't think it's often that blatantly incorrect/cranky posts have a net positive score (if they're not community deleted then they're downvoted quite heavily), but there are other ways to deal with them aside from mod deletion.
@TheSimpliFire Thanks for your feedback, but the point is that the HNQ drive-by voters generally do not downvote. For example this rubbish got 17 upvotes and we barely managed to delete it, and after that it got an undelete-vote...
@Peter It seems to make sense to me, but the question itself is kind of borderline "Does this have a name? / What is it good for?" doesn't strike me as an excellent question. Also, I think that knowledge of typology is less important here than knowledge of extended number systems and infinite ordinals.
@user21820 Yes, it is annoying. Though the most recent votes are more than a year old.
@TheSimpliFire Maybe? I feel like the reference request tag should be for more specific or precisely stated problems. "Does this have a name?" and "Has this been studied?" feels too broad to me, in contrast to "Where can I find a proof of [theorem]?"
But note that I said that is isn't excellent, not that it is clearly off-topic or terrible.
@user21820 As I said before, HNQ-related upvoted nonsense is nowadays a much more reduced issue than before. But your second link is a good one to discuss; since mods are exception handlers, where an answer is simply incorrect it might not be a bad idea to add a notice saying precisely that.
Unfortunately this feature request has not been made available yet, but it is possible for CMs to add to the selection of post notices (by request of site mods) if that is warranted by consensus.
Completely bogus answer got 12 upvotes due to HNQ and only 6 downvotes despite 23 upvotes on a comment pointing out the error, and the second version still makes no sense.
@TheSimpliFire We have generally been admonished not to judge the mathematical correctness of answers. I think that changing this stance would require, at the very least, some discussion on meta. I also do not know how the rest of the moderation team feels about adjudicating mathematical correctness.
Totally fails to answer the question as Paramanand pointed out but got 9 upvotes. (Disclaimer: I posted a counter-answer but the asker failed to accept it...)
@XanderHenderson Exactly. That's why I said consensus at the end, this is a big decision and should not be something approved by one/a small group of people.
@user21820 That must require community approval as Xander has suggested. But I see no harm in the action of raising this issue on meta, as it has not been discussed in depth recently.
I would love to have a wikipedia-style banner to tack onto a post: "This answer is of disputed mathematical correctness. The information contained in the answer may not be accurate. If you are knowledgeable in this area, please consider leaving a comment, voting (up or down), or nominating the post for deletion."
@XanderHenderson Put my thought into words, also note Skeptics.SE has their own custom post notices so it's definitely a viable path if it's agreed upon.
@XanderHenderson The last option fails, because (if you forgot) normal users cannot delete-vote unless the score is low. That's why HNQ throws a pile of poop into the system.
@JitendraSingh No, thanks. I do not think that I am suited for that position. Apart from that, I do not have the required “Convention” tag because my activity on Meta is almost zero.
I have respect for the moderators who surely spend a lot of time and energy with that job, and still are regularly criticized because they cannot meet everybody's expectations. I could not do that.
@XanderHenderson Forgot to reply to this, but it's not too broad if the result they are looking for is very specific. However, it would be very/more suitable on MO, see Is this a known compactification of the natural numbers?
@user21820 Well, I (inadvertently) retracted my delete vote because I did not pay close attention to the dialog. – The ability to retract reopen and delete votes is a new feature!
@TheSimpliFire I had mentioned that in the Math Meta Chat when Stack Overflow reduced the close/reopen vote threshold from 5 to 3, but apart from one comment there was no feedback.
@MartinR Dang it; given the major activity among only a handful users, but quite vocal, in the Reopen&Undelete thread, I don't know how this would fair in a contemporary post to meta to test the idea out. We'd need to have strong justifications, and support from many of us. Meta, at times, draws more complainers of downvoted, closed, and/or deleted posts, than any other type of question.
-1. The point of moderators is not to judge technical accuracy. This has been mentioned hundreds of times on meta stack overflow and meta stack exchange. — Ekadh Singh - Reinstate Monica3 mins ago
^ See, some users don't want moderators to care about mathematical correctness. =(
I don't know what's the point of Math SE if even the mathematics is wrong lol.
Question closed, reopened, closed again, deleted.
Please undelete my answer to the question https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/4248118/is-this-proof-correct-for-positive-semidefinite-matrices?noredirect=1
The question had been closed as a duplicate to the older question Is it true that $A^2...
Reopened
Please reopen Solving $2\cos \left( \frac{\pi }{2}-\theta \right)=3\cos \left( \frac{\pi }{3}+\theta \right)$ for $0 < θ < 2π$.
This question was closed as a duplicate by the Community bot, yet it is not remotely related to Find all $x$ that satisfy $ 3 \cos{2x}=-1 $ for $0^{\circ} \leq ...
Please undelete : https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/4152081/is-this-a-valid-proof-that-2x-0-has-no-real-solutions I fail to see why this has been deleted. The user clearly provides an attempt. The question was unilaterally closed before as a dupe of a question(that didn’t meet the site g...
Undeleted, deleted again
How can Irrational numbers go on forever asks an elementary but reasonable mathematical question with a factual answer. It was closed as “needs details or clarity”, but I found it clear enough to answer. (I think it should probably have been closed as a duplicate.)
Par...
Reopened
question closed for too broad/unfocused even after it was edited to have only 1 question: Whether or not a (cyclic and thus Abelian) group $\mathbb Z_{p^m}$ (prime power) is decomposable into (normal) subgroups
I don't mean to be arrogant, but I think the previous close votes were for ol...
@Feeds Crap! I ran into the same issue as mentioned on meta: tried to vote to delete one of the posts, which had 2 delete votes, and instead of being informed I already had voted to delete, I inadvertently "retracted" my vote. I which there were some things the developers didn't screw up, for once.
Let me just say, before they correct the issue, when receiving a pop up after voting to delete anything, be sure to read the prompt. They look exactly alike: One is "vote to delete this post?" or "Vote to retract your vote?" ... with no warning "You already voted to delete this post."
@ArcticChar Probably need to the "Help FAQ", under "Asking" "(1) Don't even dare mention the Collatz Conjecture. JUST DON'T!!" Half-joking, but then again ... ;D
@Math I'll give you one warning for you to stop your nonsense in this chat room. I'll also ping @Xander. It seems every question you post here for deletion is a post answered five or more years ago by a user you're well known to have harassed. Do not target any user ever.
@amWhy I can fix this BUG using a greasemonkey script to change the appearance of the "delete" button. For me, it now looks like "Delete-voted already (1)" instead of "Delete (1)". Who wants the script? CC @MartinR @Peter @TheSimpliFire
@Joe No problem! I understand. Glad to see you, though! Have you read the meta announcement about an upcoming election? Next week, nominations begin, then depending on the number of people running, the actual week of the election will be announced.
I flicked through the announcement, but I haven't been following the details closely. It does seem that this election is going to be very significant, in light of the EOQs announcement.