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00:01
I can't even explain what is not clear, or how to improve it..
“It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form.”
Use it, people!
@Gilles Yes, if not edited within the next couple of hours...
@RanG no, you should vote to close now, and reopen if the question is edited
10
Q: A guide to moderating crypto.stackexchange yourself - close voting

NinefingersSo one thing that came out of our recent chat meeting was that (and I'd sort of guessed this by nosing at people's profiles to work out how much SE-wide experience you have) some of our high rep members are unsure about how the close vote system works. So, I'm going to take this opportunity to wr...

3
@Gilles I have this feeling that closed questions are never re-opened. Is it only me?
@RanG it's only you
as a moderator, I've often responded to flags to reopen
00:06
@Gilles (:
it's true that we don't have moderators yet, but we do have 5 users who are regularly on chat, so if you see a question worth reopening you can post a link here
however, what's the point? this only blocks the answers, right?
It gives a signal to the asker that his question really needs improvement
@RanG it indicates that the question is not welcome (in its present state), removes it from the list of unanswered question, and makes it a candidate for eventual deletion
I've voted to close it (and left a comment)
00:07
If you never close questions, you end up with lots of crap that no one cares about but still dilutes searches
I've rarely voted to reopen so far, simply because none of the closed questions got better or were good questions in the first place
@Gilles oh, OK. I know question should be closed, but it seems the OP is trying to improve it.. this is why I was hesitant. Don't wish to scare people away..
So, what's the purpose of downvoting?
or is it the same - closing will come as a consequence of downvoting?
Downvoting means that you think the question can't be salvaged
Or is so bad that you want to give an immediate signal instead of waiting for 4 others to agree with you
@AlextenBrink no, it means that you don't think it's useful
you can change your vote after an edit
I guess that's a better way of wording it :)
00:11
downvotes do tend to stick more than closure, though, because only you can change your vote, whereas a closure can be reverted by any 5 user or any mod
that makes sense
I personally think the SE people should reconsider the name 'closing', as I think it scares people off who aren't acquainted with the mechanism
'Closing' sounds so final
Though it's probably hard to come up with a better name: 'Frozen' might be a better one
@AlextenBrink no! “frozen” sounds like you can't edit, it sends the wrong message
I see far more people thinking “closed” means “satisfactorily answered”
00:16
Oh, that's even worse :P
should be renamed "closed-for-renovation" or alike
(:
@RanG oh, a majority of closed questions are unsalvageable
@Gilles "renovate or delete" (as in "publish or perish")
2
Q: A lambda calculus evaluation involving Church numerals

JeroenI understand that a Church numeral $c_n$ looks like $\lambda s. \lambda z. s$ (... n times ...) $s\;z$. This means nothing more than "the function $s$ applied $n$ times to the function $z$". A possible definition of the $\mathtt{times}$ function is the following: $\mathtt{times} = \lambda m. \la...

I was considering posting a question asking for examples of grammars that show that SLR(1), LALR(1) and LR(1) are different, but that'd be a seeding question and we're supposed to no longer need those :S
It's a nice question though - I think I've seen something similar on SO once
 
2 hours later…
02:34
@AlextenBrink this is because "off-topic" questions get closed, and this is usually final. This is not same as "closed for renovation"...
 
3 hours later…
05:29
0
Q: Discussing Computational Complexity

CharWhere can a person go to discuss issues and ideas of open problems in computational complexity? Prepublication? Mailing lists, forums, IRC, chat, personal messages, experts willing to share their knowledge and encourage development?

 
5 hours later…
10:26
@Kaveh Imho, no.
 
2 hours later…
12:41
1
Q: Finding unoccupied points in a screen filled with windows

daniel.jackson(this is related to my other question, see here) Imagine a screen, with 3 windows on it: Suppose each window is represented by a tuple (x, y, width, height). I'd like to find an efficient way of generating all unoccupied points inside the red bounding rectangle. In the above example, we hav...

 
1 hour later…
13:44
0
Q: What is the average turnaround time?

SheldonFor the following jobs: The average wait time would be using a FCFS algorithm: (6-6)+(7-2)+(11-5)+(17-5)+(14-1) -> 0+5+6+10+13 -> 34/5 = 7 (6.8) What would the average turnaround time be?

0
Q: Why is Relativization a barrier?

NikhilWhen I was explaining the Baker-Gill-Solovay proof that there exists an oracle with which we can have, $\mathsf{P} = \mathsf{NP}$, and an oracle with which we can have $\mathsf{P} \neq \mathsf{NP}$ to a friend, a question came up as to why such techniques are ill-suited for proving the $\mathsf{P...

 
6 hours later…
20:09
-2
Q: Master Degree or Job?

testI am recent graduate from a UK university in computer science. As I am not sure what to study for my master degree, I went for a Web-Developer graduate job, and got accepted. As I will probably go for a master in 1-2 years, I was wondering if my undergraduate degree will be consider useless. And ...

1
Q: How to score a given arrangement of windows on a screen to produce good layouts

daniel.jackson(this is related to my other question, see here) I would like to write a function that scores a given arrangement of windows on a screen. The purpose of this function is to determine whether a particular layout is good and by going over other possible layouts, finding the one with the highest s...

0
Q: dequeueMax bigOh if implemented with unsorted vector

nlognfanMy simplified analysis: dequeueMax: linearSearch, removeElementAndShrinkArray for 1st element if number of elements is N: linearSearch takes N comparisons in any case removeElementAndShrinkArray has to make N/2 moves on average, (N in worst case) for the next element: N-1 and (N-1)/2 for the 3rd ...

1
Q: What are the defining characteristics of dynamic languages?

spirWell, all is in the title. But here are the reason for my question. I recently realised that there may be, in fact, 2 main differences: Type-constancy: symbols (vars in the widest sense) have types constantly known and fixed at design time, meaning they have the same type on every application/...

 
1 hour later…
21:27
Would this machine learning question be on-topic for CS?
0
Q: Machine Learning: Linear classifier and possibility to separate

MaxSuppose we have 2 kernel functions $K_1(x,y)$ and $K_2(x,y)$. We know, that the dataset ($(x_1,y_1),\ldots,(x_l,y_l),$ $y_i \in \{-1,1\}$ ) is separated with the first one (that is, there are $w,$ $w_0$: $$y_i(K_1(w,x_i)-w_0)>0 $$ for all $i=1,\ldots,l$ ), and not separated with the second ker...

never mind, it's going to Statistical Analysis (as I thought it should)

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