My name is JaMarkus Brown. I'm from Fielder Elementary. I told my teacher about my work, and she sent me here.
A couple days ago, I was thinking about the Collatz conjecture. So I made a little Scratch project that told me the number of moves it took to get from any number down to 4. (I called th...
Let $T: \mathbb{N} \rightarrow \mathbb{N} $ be your typical plain collatz map ($N \rightarrow N/2$ for even $N$ and $N \rightarrow 3*N + 1$ for odd $N$) A positive integer $N$ is contained in some loop if there exist $j > 0$ such that $T^{(j)}(N) = N$. We can measure how bad $N$ fails to be in a...
@JoseAvilez IMHO, it was correctly closed and deleted. Negative marks for asking two questions, and for not including any effort. Additionally, a total of eight users saw fit to close and delete the post.
@JoseAvilez I would appreciate it if we could avoid potentially loaded phrasing such as "incorrectly/correctly closed/deleted". This language suggests that it was objectively wrong to, for example, close a question. In reality, every decision to close (or open, or delete, or undelete, or downvote, or upvote) is subjective, and relies on the experience and opinions of the voters.
A better phrasing might be "I think that this question can be reopened because..." or "IMO, the question should remain closed because...". I would prefer not to put the moral weight of "correct" decision making on a subjective process.
For what it is worth, with respect to that question, I (personally) probably would not have voted to close it, but it does seem rather nebulous and vague. I wouldn't vote to reopen it, either.
I have no problem with the closure of that question. Deletion is much harsher, though. It seems to me that there should be a distinction between the two. One might argue that, if closure is borderline, then deletion is objectively excessive.
In the case of the current question, we have five reopen votes after an initial closure, a 12K user active in chat who champions the question, and a moderator who feels the question is borderline himself. Thus, I find deletion to be objectively excessive.
Having said that, I don't find the question to be too interesting. This question, which you and I both voted to reopen, is much more interesting and I think really unjustified in its deletion.
I guess I'd like to think that one could attain a level of respect here where your opinion on borderline cases like these could preserve material on the site. That does not seem to be the case.
I agree with @amWhy 's sentiment that this is community's decision, as reflected in the close/delete votes. I feel that the discussion in this meta post suggests the community was a bit harsh
@MarkMcClure I would also claim this does have enough context (attributed to Hardy; can't find info online). It "suffers" from being succinct, which is probably why it got speedily deleted. I've voted to undelete
@MarkMcClure That said, "do I find this question interesting?" is a tricky threshold as it lends itself to individual preferences. E.g. I would find most questions on, say, elementary number theory to be uninteresting to me, but I wouldn't vote to close. The questions I like to answer in stochastic analysis do attract a bit of close votes every now and then because they may intersect with finance, which others don't find interesting.
@JoseAvilez My viewpoint is that if some reasonably responsible community member champions a question then deletion is ill-advised. I mean there's just so much genuine absolute crap that's posted that there's plenty of moderation work to do, without worrying about deleting things that you and I and Xander saying - hey, that's interesting.
@JoseAvilez, @MarkMcClure, @Xander : let's dispense with subjective reasons, and stick to Quality Standards? (@Xander - I'm only replying to your last, albeit, subjective, comment on this board).
@amWhy The quality standards are subjective, particularly around the edges of what different people consider to be "context". Not even the most bare bones PSQ is considered off-topic by every user of the site, and the standards for questions are a consensus standard. Again, I would prefer a dialog in which the decisions of other users are not portrayed as "correct" or "incorrect".
@XanderHenderson Sure, I shall demure to ye, lest you suspend me yet again. But be careful, because you are essentially making a subjective in who you call out, likely because you "kind of liked the question."
Not only are the "Quality Standards" subjective but, as articulated this Meta post, they largely concern the actions that Moderators now take in response to prolific answerers of low quality questions.
While the post does conclude with several suggestions that other users can take to help out, none of those include deleting questions - or even closing them. Thus, the "Quality Standards" don't seem to be germane to this discussion.
@amWhy I am sorry that you feel called out. I will note that my initial comment was directed towards JoseAvilez, not you. I was responding to their comment, not yours.
@MarkMcClure No, that isn't right. Questions which don't meet the consensus quality standards of the site have always been at risk of closure and deletion by the community.
The meta post you reference is about attempting to stem the flow of low-quality questions by more actively admonishing the people who enable those questions, rather than just the people who ask them.
@MarkMcClure I mean... sure... but when you make a comment like "While the post does conclude with several suggestions that other users can take to help out, none of those include deleting questions - or even closing them. Thus, the "Quality Standards" don't seem to be germane to this discussion", I think that you might be missing a step.
The meta post doesn't mention things like closing and deleting questions because those things already go without saying.
In general, the only reason to close or delete a question (or answer) is because it doesn't meet the quality standards of the site for some reason (e.g. a question lacks context, or isn't about math, or is a duplicate question).
@amWhy addressed you and I and referred to Quality Standards capitalized, which I take to refer to that post. I don't think that we as users should take that as encouragement to delete borderline posts.
@MarkMcClure Ah, now I understand. That post is usually referred to by its title "Enforcement of Quality Standards". The quality standards themselves are articulated in a few meta posts, primarily math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/9959 .
When I talk about "Quality Standards", I am referring to that post.
In any event, I am all for "quick to close, slow to delete, but any question which is closed should probably ultimately be deleted".
In any event, my main point was about the tone of the rhetoric in this room: please refrain from telling other users that the decisions they (or the community) have made are "correct" or "incorrect"---this tends to have an inflammatory effect. Focus on desired future actions (e.g. "I think that this post should be closed because..." or "I would like to reopen this post because..."), not the legitimacy of past actions.
