@user I am not convinced by the deletion and I have voted to undelete again. One should not delete such post as dupe simply because one answer applies to both. There have been four reopen votes. I suggest putting a reopen request on meta as well.
user12692
Also, if one insists of deletion, one should make sure that all the instances in the deleted post being preserved in the so called "abstract duplicate" one. Otherwise, this is very much wasting the source of this site.
In any case, if you think those particular parameters will be searched for (unlikely) then you could simply add them to the body of abstract dupe question (e.g. "some other common instances are ....").
user12692
I'm not sure about this. But at least, one should try to do something to make sure that one can find the question by searching the key word like $x^2+35=7^n$ or even $x^2+a=b^n$ in Approach0.
Here a very good example about the way I think we should handle the questions which at first are not submitted in the best form. By some simple hint the asker has finally solved the question by him/herself and added a full solution to its OP which has been greately improved. Up to now the question has 4 vote for closure.
@user I agree that getting a user to provide more information and improve their question is a good way for poor questions to be dealt with. This works well when the asker is responsive. This fails when the asker is not responsive.
One way to encourage an asker to be response is to (1) not answer the question until it is in reasonable shape, and (2) put the question on hold until it is in better shape so that other users don't answer.
This is important, as many askers, upon getting an answer, abandon their questions, leading to large numbers of very poorly written questions with answers. This pollutes the database, and makes it harder for future users to find good answers.
@XanderHenderson As we can see in this specific case the asker was responsive and I think that an immediate closure an multiple downvoting couldn't be so effective to obtain the result. I'm not saying that always works but it indicates that also different strategies can work fine. I prefer the "welcoming" strategy, in particular with new contributors. Whan the asker is not responsive and the question is not improved I agree with deletion.
@user Great. Then can you explain how your actions with respect to this question are consistent with your just stated stance that it is reasonable to put questions on hold (and perhaps subsequently delete them) when the author is unresponsive?
Also, I think you need to get it out of your head that putting a question on hold is "unwelcoming". This is a way of giving the question author a chance to breath and clarify, and to focus on asking the question they want to ask.
This prevents subsequent clarifying edits from rendering answers inconsistent with the final version of the question.
I'll note that I, personally, often vote to put questions on hold without downvoting them---I typically only downvote questions (particularly from new users) after a day or two of unresponsiveness.
@XanderHenderson The question you are referring to has an answer appreciated by many users and thus I think it can be useful also for others. Why should we delete it?
@XanderHenderson With respect to this question, I think that it should be closed and deleted as unclear, but I would be willing to adopt the compromise position that it be closed, but left undeleted if opposing parties can be brought on board.
@XanderHenderson I think that a new user can feel the absence of any interaction in a negative perspective. I think that a positive approach, with some feedback on the questionn prefarably a hint or a sketch of solution, can be really more effective to obtain some result and get more new users involved in the community.
@XanderHenderson I appreciate that.
@XanderHenderson We can discuss this possibility more in detail. I would like to know also the advice of @Jack on that.
@user Is it really your belief that anything other than a tiny minority of new users are actually interested in taking part in the community? It seems to me that most new users are interested in getting answers to homework problems as quickly as possible, and have very little interest in the primary goal of MSE, which is to create a repository of questions and answers.
@XanderHenderson I think that many users are indeed interested to getting answers but it is not bad or in contrast with the more general aim to create a repository of questions and answers. Moreover I think that many users could be interested to create a personl repository with their own questions answered and thus when a question is well posed deletion can be very disruptive action to get new users involved.
@XanderHenderson Those are of course only examples of a great variety of situations. I think that the issue to select best questions and answer to create an useful repository shouldn't be placed in contrast with others purposes which may correspond to a great variety of personal preferences.
@XanderHenderson I'm sure it is also designed for that, my point is that maybe it is not exclusively designed for that.
@Zacky What do you mean you "can't disclose" your method? Either you are doing something which is in-line with the rules of the site (in which case, you should disclose your methods), or you are doing something which is against the rules (in which case, you should stop).
@XanderHenderson I agree that closing question so that those can be improved is really useful, but some close for the purpose to delete them afterwards.
@Zacky No, I understand that we both wrote messages. What I mean is that voting-to-close with the intention of deleting is a separate issue from voting-to-close with the intention of giving the user time to fix their question.
That being said, if a question is closed for not meeting site standards and the asker makes no effort to improve the question, then it should be deleted.
@Zacky One of the hallmarks of productive discourse is transparency. One of the reasons CRUDE was created in the first place was to provide transparency. Your unwillingness to be transparent gives the impression of ill-intent.
@Zacky In my opinion, the question still doesn't meet site standards. The edit does nothing to provide context other than to make the claim that the asker tried to use some techniques---there isn't even a description of what, precisely, they tried.
@Zacky The stated justification for undeleting questions which have been deleted by the asker after receiving an answer is to prevent users from cheating then covering their tracks. If a question is more than a few months old, that justification no longer makes sense.
@Zacky "Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
The question should be "Is this question in-line with the standards of the site?" Yes or no.
It isn't about the effort or personality or willingness of the asker; it is about the quality of the question vis-a-vis MSE's mission to provide a repository of high-quality question-and-answers.
@Zacky I was stating a general principle, not anything having to do with a particular question. I already told you my opinion about that particular question.
@Zacky A possible interaction with the site is (1) A asks a question, (2) B answers the question, (3) A copies that answer and turns it in for credit on some assignment, (4) A deletes the question-answer pair to cover their tracks.
This is a form of cheating, along with an attempt to hide their cheating.
If the question is undeleted quickly, then the cover-up fails.
However, after a year has passed, there is no longer any reason to undelete the question as a cheating-prevention measure.
At which point it seems reasonable to respect the author's desire to remove the question from the archive.
I think that a very strong case needs to be made to undelete a question when it is deleted by the author, particularly after so much time has passed.
Personally, I am not even terribly moved the by the argument I presented above (I don't think that the role of moderators on MSE should be to police attempts at cheating), but that is the main argument I have seen in favor of undeleting questions which are deleted by their askers.
I've voted to undelete because I thought it's useful to have undeleted, as you can see OP deleted his/her profile, there's nothing about cover-up. (regarding U106).
@Zacky You've missed my point again. If there was an attempt at a cover-up, that attempt succeeded, thus the usual motivation of preventing such a cover-up makes no sense.
I don't know, because I am not looking at specific posts.
I am objecting to your general approach of digging up years-old questions (without disclosing methods) in order to undelete questions which were deleted by their askers.
Until you disclose your methods, I will not be following any links you post here in an attempt to marshal votes. I would suggest that others do the same.
I would also note that, sans methodology, it looks an awful lot like you are trying to organize a voting ring, which is explicitly against site policy.
@XanderHenderson You need to be careful about bias here, since I don't believe it is true that all CRUDE users have revealed how they find questions, but I don't recall you making similar remarks about voting rings there.
@BillDubuque That's true, especially some make big lists quite often. Anyway I for one don't care how they do that and I don't think Xander is right (that they must disclose their way).
@BillDubuque I've asked user2180 about where his links come from. He put forward a query which searches for posts with fewer than some number of characters, which seemed reasonable to me.
The only other user I know of who tends to post lists of links is RRL; I don't know where their links come from, and I typically don't pay any attention to them.
@XanderHenderson BTW I've noticed that roughly 90% of the closed/deleted questions answered by me seems closed/deleted by the same 3 or 4 users. As for your knowledge, is this kind of pattern against the site policy, as targeting, or it is a perfectly allowed behaviour? I don't know how many other users have similar records.
@user It is possible that you are being targeted, though I think that a more parsimonious explanation is that (1) there are a lot of low quality questions posted in the calculus tag (as well as the related tags) and (2) you answer a lot of those low quality questions. Hence it is very likely that anyone looking to trim low-quality questions will unintentionally also delete a lot of your answers.
If you focused on (1) looking for duplicate targets rather than answering and (2) answering only high-quality questions, you would likely find that fewer of your answers got deleted.
@user I would say that the majority of posts (on this site) are deleted by a small numbers of users, the fact that many of your posts are deleted by them comes natural afterwards and is not making you a specific target. Note that the majority of posts are also undelete by a small number of users.
Only a small group of people delete/undelete, rest of them aren't bothering with it.
@Zacky That's really a useless loss of effort. What is the problem nowdays to have 1M of identical questions or answers. The only issue is to select and organize the material to create the wanted repository. I can't see the point! We could spend our time in a variety of more enjoyable activities.
@user Again, if your desire is to tutor students (i.e. answer questions on an individual basis), then MSE might not be the best place for you. On the other hand, if you are interested in doing the drudge work of maintaining a searchable database of questions and answers, there is a great need for organizers.
If it isn't enjoyable, and you don't want to do things that aren't enjoyable, then don't do it---but please don't disparage the work of those who are willing to put in the time, nor make their jobs harder by actively disrupting their work.
