@SjoerdC.deVries to some extend, but there is also an increasing number of people who literally spend more time posting question than trying to solve their problem. and some are rude, too. I'd rather some people get turned away than this becomes mathgroup (although I may be a minority on this)
@OleksandrR. would be nice if people also encourage new users saying things like "I don't care if you don't care" to be less aggressive especially if they're going to upvote this kind of comment.
I think that a lot of people confuse expectation of basic research and minimal effort with being hostile... It is not unfriendly to ask someone to clarify their question or to tell them that they haven't provided any info and are just writing empty words on a screen
Part of the reason why a lot of people are sympathetic to the newbies is that everyone can relate the new user's confusion to their personal struggles when starting out with mma. It's definitely not an easy to learn language like MATLAB/python. Some might have utilized MG/SO, others not so much. But most people did plough through just fine and in a lot of the cases, learnt to ask better questions and to read the docs.
It's when users bypass that and start using the site as a substitute for google (or in worse examples, personal problem solver), that it begins to become an issue. The solution is to not let it become an issue. We have additional tools that make this better than MG. There is no Steve... it's the community members that are doing janitorial work. If people feel strongly, they should utilize whatever tools they have (flags/downvotes/close votes/delete votes/editing) to chip in.
We have about 50ish 3k+users, but the close vote/delete vote list is usually composed of the same set of 10 or so users. I'm not sure whether we've subconsciously formed a clique or if the others are slow/unfamiliar with the tools (having not had it on SO/elsewhere or being new to SE) or if they're plain unwiling to vote to close anything...
@R.M there used to be more people closing - I think a few people were caught by the higher reputation limits post-graduation. I would agree that the janitorial work is being done by relatively few people, but that is as I would expect given that there are a small number of people visiting many times a day and others who only visit once a day or so.
I also agree that we need to be alert to no-effort questions, often from people who are rude, to boot. But there are ways and means to getting people to improve their questions, and I'd rather at least try to get them to improve than slam the door shut on them after the first crappy question.
One thing I'd note in this is that in the last two weeks, we had 21 new Teacher badges. These are the people to encourage to participate more in the site. (And note the profile comment of this guy, who just got his Teacher badge today).
Also, there are a few people that have been part of the site for a while but have recently picked up their participation, like Sylvia, and who might not be that familiar with the SO tools.
Something else to bear in mind: questions that are well-posed and not too RTFM, but are a bit "simple".... are exactly the sorts of questions for newer or less experienced users to cut their teeth on and build up answering reputation. Are we dismissing some questions as "bad" just because they are not challenging to the top few users? They might be very encouraging to some others.
Oh, and one other thing: it's August. I'm pretty sure some regulars who used to do a fair bit of closing and other clean-up work are just not around so much at the moment because they are on vacation. (Istvan, Heike, Leonid, F'x, David)
On another topic, I just checked - there hasn't been a new question on the Poker site since August 6! We complain about getting the wrong kind of questions, but at least we get questions. Poker.SE has to be top of the list for the next round of closures.
For example, using ExampleData[{"TestImage", "Girl2"}]:
what's a general way to make the background transparent? I've tried various combinations of EdgeDetect and Threshold and ImageAdd but can't figure it out. Thank you.
@Verbeia regarding your work for the tender: are you aware of DDFLink? Maybe relevant? I.e., why not use Bloomberg and link it to Mathematica? Looks easier to me than importing a bunch of Excel files ...
@R.M I'm not really talking about those expectations etc but rather how they are worded. I believe a new user should feel welcome, and a string of down votes and closures on a first post, however justifiable they may be, feel very hostile. And not only to their target but also to new passers-by.
New users should get some credit, and we should be patiently guiding them; there should be no shooting from the hip. I know it is difficult, and I know I could have been called rude at times myself, but we should always try.
I believe this site can be good and nice. Those two are not mutually exclusive.
2
So, if we close as duplicate, for instance, we could explain that it is nothing personal, it prevents that other people searching for an answer have to wade through multiple question threads etc.
@Verbeia In the mod statistics I don't see a decline in closure rate, if anything it is increasing.
@RolfMertig I didn't know about it, so thanks. The "GraphMatica" project is just one part of a broader modernisation. At the moment we have far too much data sitting in spreadsheets, and so any charting solution has to accommodate that. We also have a number of (SQLServer-based) database systems where other data are stored, and the fraction that is stored in them rather than Excel is going to rise. A Bloomberg link is nice, but to be honest Bloomberg only covers maybe 5% of our data.
Some comes from other agencies, other commercial data providers and so on. We source data from a huge array of sources, including our own trading systems.
@SjoerdC.deVries I wasn't referring to the rate of closure so much as the number of people casting close votes. @R.M was referring to the possibility that we have formed a clique. I think it's true that the top users are very prominent in the site, but I don't think it is quite such a narrow group.
@J.M. No, it was one of those things that was simultaneously funny but cruel - like slapstick or one of those shows that plays video clips of small children crashing into things (like the family dog or their father's crown jewels).
So your sense of humor is not malfunctioning.
@verde hola
Pop quiz: how much commenting would you expect in a Mathematica package?
One of the other interested parties has asked for the code, which means legally we have to give it to everyone. Which means I have some commenting and documentation to do :-/
@Verde True, but ... I am acquainted, if only online, with almost all of the bidders - so I'd be embarrassed to show it if it does not have at least some commenting.
Also, more comments means fewer questions about it. I am going on leave for an extended period at the end of the year, so I don't want to leave people hanging with questions while I am out of contact.
@Verbeia I've been both writing and answering RFPs for the last 20 years, and never released or received a single line of code before the contract is signed
In case anyone is wondering, I haven't revealed anything that isn't in the RFT documents or the email that has already gone to everyone who has received them.
@J.M. I didn't want to hurt someones feelings by giving a snippy answer. But I'm here in my freetime and for fun and everywhere on our site is at least one big Mathematica. The guy obviously ignored that, didn't check any question here nor did he read the FAQ before posting a simple rtfm-question which he could have solved in seconds by searching for "resizing image matlab" and following the first hit! And we as funnest community should not have at least a bit of fun before migration?
I can now see what might be funny about it, as Verbeia explained. What probably irked me was that nobody bothered to flag for migration, and instead I see a not-very kind answer with a number of upvotes.
Hi everyone -- I have a problem with a moderator on a different SE site. I believe he has acted rudely and inappropriately in a comment to a well formed question. He made no comment or suggestion about the question itself, instead made snarky comments and outright insults because I had added the word "update" and a date and time to an edit rather than relying on the edit log. Hardly a devastating breach of etiquette.
I emailed his published email address to state my concerns discretely, privately, and with all due respect to his position as a monitor. A role I greatly admire and respect…
@J.M. -- The other cite's moderator suspended my account leaving me with only 1 reputation point, which doesn't permit me to either flag anything in my question for moderator's review or posting a concern to it's meta.
@J.M. -- Thanks for the team(AT)stackexchange.com address. Seems like the way to go.
@Jagra wow, that is insane. I saw the question and the comment and was about to tell you that it, while snarky, was not something worth wasting your time on... I hadn't noticed he suspended you for it!
I deleted your account. You asked a Java-vs-C++ question. This site has been through its share of programming-language holy wars and I wasn't going to allow that again.
You also asked for people to help you pirate a text book. That "question" got closed and heavily down-voted, though you never d...
@R.M -- Thanks for the support. I hugely value SE and have always tried to participate in a considered and appropriate way. My question on that site had 3 up votes and 3 favorites. This had nothing to do with the question. An unfortunate thing. Ah well... back to things more important.
@SjoerdC.deVries Again, I think we've been fairly good at guiding users new to Mathematica and SE. However, I have little patience (as do many others) with people new to the internet — this is not the place and I don't have the time to educate them. Users that don't care to ask properly (and I don't mean grammar/spelling issues) and take things for granted, etc., despite being pointed in the right direction... I typically don't engage with such users; I just down vote, close and move on.
@SjoerdC.deVries Also, the amount of interaction and guidance depends on their feedback too... if they just remain mum, no one likes talking to a wall. See this interaction between me and a user. He was initially upset that he was down voted and was discouraged, but I explained our expectations and he understood where he was wrong and how he could improve
Such new users are the ones we want, not every person who passes a byte over to mma.se. I don't mean to say we should be rude (and I'd never advocate that), but we needn't hold a red carpet welcome for everyone either... I'd rather some recent new users not return.
@Jagra I don't see anything wrong with what you did... if he didn't want to be contacted outside of SE, he shouldn't have put his email on his profile. If he was so concerned with the word "update", he could've edited it out and left a comment telling you not to do it (and it is not forbidden either). While not always necessary, explicit marks of "edit/update" are sometimes useful depending on the context.
@J.M. Perhaps not what you intended but I just hung my MathKernel with Sum[k/(k^7 - 2 k + 3), {k, Infinity}] // Normal // FunctionExpand // FullSimplify :^)
Today we rely heavily on satellites orbiting Earth for a variety of purposes. Mapping satellites are used to collect satellite images used in maps. Communication satellites are used for both telecommunication and internet access or for navigation services like GPS and GLONASS. Other usage areas are weather study, scientific observation, and reconnaissance. The following model, [...]
Related: Is there any Mathematica.SE promo planned for the 2012 Wolfram Technology Conference?
The other question asks if there's any sort of promotional work being planned for it.
I'm asking if any of you are already planning on attending. I'd love to send some items for these users to giv...
Related: Is there any Mathematica.SE promo planned for the 2012 Wolfram Technology Conference?
The other question asks if there's any sort of promotional work being planned for it.
I'm asking if any of you are already planning on attending. I'd love to send some items for these users to giv...
@R.M There is a difference between ignorant and obnoxious people. You don't have to educate the ignorant if you don't like that, but it isn't necessary to scold them either. The obnoxious category is a different thing altogether. Your handling of matters in the example you gave is great, but there have been occasions where your input hasn't been that well received. Again, the same holds for me. Mark mcClure has stated at least twice that my moderation policies were too harsh.
@RolfMertig - you need to email the contact address in the RFT documents if you have any specific questions / comments / want to explore ways of meeting that criterion.
For example, using ExampleData[{"TestImage", "Girl2"}]:
what's a general way to make the background transparent? I've tried various combinations of EdgeDetect and Threshold and ImageAdd but can't figure it out. Thank you.
Consider the sum
sum1 = Sum[k/(k^7 - 2 k + 3), {k, Infinity}]
-RootSum[2 + 5 #1 + 21 #1^2 + 35 #1^3 + 35 #1^4 + 21 #1^5 +
7 #1^6 + #1^7 &, (PolyGamma[0, -#1] + PolyGamma[0, -#1] #1)/(
5 + 42 #1 + 105 #1^2 + 140 #1^3 + 105 #1^4 + 42 #1^5 + 7 #1^6) &]
Back in the day of Mathematica 3.0...
Related: Is there any Mathematica.SE promo planned for the 2012 Wolfram Technology Conference?
The other question asks if there's any sort of promotional work being planned for it.
I'm asking if any of you are already planning on attending. I'd love to send some items for these users to giv...
