If candidates @JackD'Aurizio @quid @SchrodingersCat @ZacharySelk or anyone really, would like to participate on my newest meta post, please feel free to do so
I was reading Proposal: ban verbatim homework questions which have no accompanying text and I came upon some startling old statistics.
Since 2013, the number of questions on this site has multiplied by more than 6 times.
Likewise, the number of answers has multiplied by more than 5 times.
We a...
Thanks, I saw it. Maybe I will say something. That said, not unlike in real life, I am not convinced that the time shortly before an election is the best for such a discussion (if the goal is to arrive at a reasonable solution).
@quid Perhaps not, but as Martin Sleziak said, the time shortly before an election is the best time to see what nominees believe in and how they will behave "on the field" :D
This is also reasonable move before election - highly viewed post on meta can raise candidates profile. And maybe from discussion on the specific issue we can learn more about a candidate than from rather generic statements in questionnaire. (By which I mean that it is quite easy to state in the questionnaire how somebody intends to behave as mod. But seeing the person in actual debate or even interacting with them gives better picture.)
Likewise, the question happens to be on a subject I'd think many of the possible voters would be interested in hearing the reactions and thoughts of the nominees.
As voting on your meta post indicates already it is controversial. I am not sure I see the point in stirring up controversy. But more power to you @SimplyBeautifulArt
Also the question is a bit ambiguous. Are you literally asking "why" it is the case or is it rhetorical and you want to propose it. It is better to be up front @SimplyBeautifulArt
@quid Hm, perhaps it is a "why" question and a proposal?
Personally, I don't really feel it's a particularly new proposal, and that there are likely already similar proposals that failed, however, I guess the main question I want to get across is the one in the title.
Making this an official policy would have numerous effects. Hopefully, users will be able to close questions as homework questions rather than closing them as "missing context", which most agree to be the wrong 'reason' to vote to close a homework question. Note that this is also relatively consistent with How to ask a good question, since homework questions that show effort will likely fall into "questions that come up in the course of doing a homework problem", and questions which include other context such as links are less likely to be isolated problems — Simply Beautiful Art1 hour ago
Personally, I'd like to have an official policy rather than a half-agreed solution
@quid We'd be able to have a more suitable option to close questions is the main one. We'd also have less arguments on which questions should be closed and which ones shouldn't.
Moreover I do not share your concern re "missing context". Why is it the wrong reason. It is exactly the reason why it should be closed, and if the context w ere provided the question would stop to be covered by the policy under "On the other hand, questions that come up in the course of doing a homework problem, but are separate from the main point of the problem, might not be considered homework questions. "
@quid Closing questions as missing context often conveys the wrong message to the OP. For example, they may not realize that posting homework questions as they found them are not what this site is for, and therefore, would not attempt to fix it.
Ofc, I'm rather new to the business, but that's what I think/see
And if you tell them it is because it is like homework you will get replies that it is not homework. Then you can reply that this does not matter it is still like homework and that is what counts.
And confusion ensues.
Using the word 'homework' is anyway a poor idea, as no matter how you decorate it with 'like' and so on, people just do not read that carefully and will take offense.
"Do you want to suggest I try to cheat?!"
You can see this with the endless complaints about the custom close reason being under "off-topic."
@SimplyBeautifulArt Any question , be it homework or non-homework, without any context, it is bound to be closed. And the reason for closing will be of importance to OP iff he has not received his answer or if he is a long time user of MSE. Given that most of such questions come from new users, I believe the first course of action is to ensure that no one posts a complete solution .. just for rep. If someone does that, the new user would hardly pay any attention to why his question was closed.
@SimplyBeautifulArt I am not asking you to close questions so swiftly. We should try something else to curb it from this side. And you can follow Phy SE to take care of this.
@SimplyBeautifulArt no it won't because it allows one more vector of appeal namely "It is not homework." If you close it for "lack of context" this problem goes away.
Or also "it is not like homework (because it is to hard for this)" etc.
@SimplyBeautifulArt I being a member of PhySE know this thing that happens on that site for the treatment of HW questions. If any user DIRECTLY answers a HW question, the mod directly deletes the answer, stating that you violated the HW policy. In that way, PhySE has curbed the repmongering on that site.
"Lacks context" has the advantage of being intrinsic and actionable. Being "like homework" is extrinsic (determined by ones experience of what homework looks like, additional explications not withstanding) and one also cannot change it.
@SimplyBeautifulArt You can try that here too. If you wish... Obviously this is a good idea , since a SE site runs on this formula. And no doubt it will work like wonders for this site.
@quid I think that the "It is not homework" problem goes away if we define what we mean by "homework questions" as I have done in my meta post, and if someone opposes, we can explicitly tell them "Here's our definition of homework, and these are not welcomed"
@SchrodingersCat I get the small feeling the current moderators are... soft hearted. No offense to them, but sometimes being strict is a good thing.
@SchrodingersCat "Obviously this is a good idea" is it? Physics.SE is a completely different site, much smaller than ours. Clearly, there will be conflicts, so imagining that it will work like wonders is unrealistic, at least now.
@quid could you elaborate on what you mean in possibly simpler words for me?
@SimplyBeautifulArt this does not work well. It is also not clear what the advantage to describe something as "homework like" and to then describe what "homework like" means. It is better to just say what the actual problem is.
The point is if you need to describe "homework like" anyway, you can cut out the middle step and give the explanation right away.
A "homework question" is any question whose value lies in obtaining an answer to an isolated question and provides no significant value to other significantly substantial problems.
Second what is the advantage of referring to this as a "homework question"?
You could just as well say "I am voting to close this question as off-topic because its value lies in obtaining an answer to an isolated question and provides no significant value to other significantly substantial problems."
@quid For me, the problem with homework questions may not be a lack of context. My problem is that "these questions" do not provide any value to MSE, focused on obtaining an answer to an isolated problem.
@SimplyBeautifulArt this sounds like a handful of disdain for PSQ's (which I share), and a handful of elitism regarding the interpretation "no significant value to other substantial problems". Define what it takes to be significant and what counts as substantial problems. There are great questions asked in algebra-precal. There are horrible questions asked in topology. So does the first fail, where the second may pass?
@quid :-/ well, I'd rather not have to manually type that out for each homework problem. I think, as it applies to a lot of questions, that it should be an option to choose from.
@SimplyBeautifulArt alright. Still I do not see the value in referring to the question as "homework like." Describe what specifically is the problem.
@SimplyBeautifulArt yes. My main point still stands. It is that the problem with the question should be describe directly. Not indirectly, via first saying it is "homework like" and then saying what "homework like" means.
@SimplyBeautifulArt Why not stick with "Problem-Statement Questions" (which lack context), which allows us to close as "no context" where "context" is currently very well defined/described.?
@amWhy I think that there are certainly judgement calls that must be made sometimes. I'm not entirely sure if I could provide a good definition for significance, but there are some obvious examples I can make. Many of the highest voted alg-precalc questions are questions that can relate to many other problems and do not ask for "answers" to any problems at all. (They aren't of the form "here's the problem...find this...")
@amWhy Because a lack of context doesn't necessarily make a question a homework question. I'm thinking along the lines "Some questions that lack context may provide value to MSE, whereas homework questions as I have described above very likely do not." I'm not saying they can't be dealt with like we deal with PSQ's, but they are, in my eyes, a different problem.
Man... I suck at typing on mobile
@quid Arguably, many questions that get closed as lacking context might not seem to be lacking context, nor do I think the many of the askers realize the problem with the way they've posed their question. So in return, I might say that closing due to lack of context is sometimes indirect to the problem I'm imagining.
@SimplyBeautifulArt That reveals to me, @Simply, a bit of elitism/arrogance regarding at what point becomes valuable, even with no context. We need to have a more egalitarian standard, as, at this point in time. MSE describes itself as welcoming of users at all levels of mathematical experience.
@amWhy I agree that MSE should continue to welcome users at all levels. But I do not think we should welcome questions that do not contribute anything more than solving one problem.
Well, we can welcome users and inform them (be it through comments, downvotes, closure) what we expect on this site. That's only fair. Gives them a chance to start climbing a rather steep learning curve of all things MSE. Again. I prefer to describe my objection to all questions, (PSQ)$ \land$ (No context provided).
And maybe a third conjunct: $\land$ (has not responded to comments offering suggestions to improve the question)
@amWhy Then you do not mind questions that produce content that isn't useful to other problems if they do not fall under your other requirements for being a bad question?
You'd have to define what you count as "useful" to other problems, perhaps useful to other students? I think the "math at all levels" charter/signature needs to all ability levels; what we can try to obliterate are Problem statements (which by my definition include lack of context). At any level. Someone at the precipice of a dissertation conclusion should be at MO; if they ask here, yes, we need context in this case too.
@SimplyBeautifulArt Also has the problem that questions along the lines of "proof verification" might be caught in the mix.
@Desire I generally do not vote to close many posts on meta, and so am rather new at it. With two exceptions, the majority of my meta close votes had started only 3 months ago. I had thought that if a meta post had a significant amount of downvotes, then that itself would be sufficient grounds for closing. Do you have any references on proper etiquette for voting to close meta questions? — Simply Beautiful Art24 mins ago
In case someone in here does happen to know where I can find proper etiquette for voting to close meta questions
^ And it may be a duplicate, if anyone would like to take a look.
@amWhy Unfortunately, my being so new to meta makes it difficult for me to realize that meta posts generally don't get closed, regardless of how "useless" the community thinks of them.
@SimplyBeautifulArt I pressed "enter" when I was typing. Yeah; I'm not very good at finding dupes; plus, the community consensus (which is not always reached!) changes over time. So old posts reflect best the time-frame in which they're asked and/or answered; other things never change!
@SimplyBeautifulArt if it is a post not matching the intent of meta that is it is literally off-topic, it can be closed. If it is a dupe it can be marked as such. And that's about it. There may be a grayarea for bad faith posts, but this may be better handled by a mod flag.
@SimplyBeautifulArt you are welcome. What special fonts? The fonts are not uniform over different sites but part of the design. math.se has a serif font for example.
I was reading Proposal: ban verbatim homework questions which have no accompanying text and I came upon some startling old statistics.
Since 2013, the number of questions on this site has multiplied by more than 6 times.
Likewise, the number of answers has multiplied by more than 5 times.
We a...
