The answer to this question is really splitting hairs. How to simplify $\frac {25!}{3!}$? No criteria is given as to what the asker counts as "most simplified". (Note that the asker originally asked "How to solve $\frac{25!}{3!}$"

I think this question should be closed as "unclear what you're asking", the OP was asked for clarification in the comments, but his comments leave the impression that he doesn't even know himself what he's asking: math.stackexchange.com/q/2656089

Has anyone else noticed a rather recent surge in upvotes of flagrant PSQ's? It seems some users are auto-upvoting immediately upon a question's post. One question was upvoted twice today, within seconds of it posting. It was a lousy PSQ, and the upvotes came before anyone would have been able to read it. (This was today), but it seems that some users are trying to upvote pre-emptively.

@MatheinBoulomenos only one more vote to go... (and I think the author is a "she" and not a he) :-)

@amWhy oops, you may be right about that

This question should be closed and deleted (unless, of course, the person who asked the question decides to come back and fix it).

Please consider deleting these: 1, 2, 3, 4

5, 6, 7, 8

@user21820 Two of the questions linked in your message are also mentioned in this recent post on meta: How to explain this serial downvoting?

@AsafKaragila @amWhy @Did @XanderHenderson @MatheinBoulomenos: I think the following are useless and should be deleted: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

@MartinSleziak Interesting. I guess some people who follow the links in my messages also downvote some answers to PSQs.

I guess extensively downvoted might be an exaggeration - I did not check how many of the downvotes on answers were recent.

Still the OP seems to be rather suspicious about the whole thing:

@MartinSleziak Of course people who answer PSQs always hit out at whoever they like, even if it is false.

It's clear that we cannot catch all the fish (PSQs). Nobody can. We still fish anyway.

I have mainly mentioned the post here since the closure mentioned in the post is very likely related to the activity of this room - just in case some of the users of this room wish to comment on that. (And even if not, it might be useful to know that there is something crude-related on meta.)

I know. I'm just saying that those whose posts get affected by our fishing always think we have some 'purpose' against them.

@ZacharySelk @ProfessorVector: Do you agree that the questions mentioned by the above linked post are plain PSQs?

@user21820 I don't have enough rep to cast delete votes

@MatheinBoulomenos Due to a flaw in the SE system, experts cannot delete junk that has non-negative score, so you could help with that aspect if you agree on the junkness.

They are, and downvoting bad questions is ok. Downvoting answers just because the question is bad is not ok.

Is there a reason that this question, which is clearly a mis-stated PSQ, has avoided the ire of this room?

@ProfessorVector Some people will disagree with that, on the basis that answers to bad questions encourage more bad questions (and this has historically been shown to be the case). I personally won't downvote answers unless I see mathematical errors or it is not helpful/useful (as the downvote button says).

@MarkMcClure Not every bad question will get caught.

improve Since this questions was brought up anyway: Is there a $2 \times 2$ real matrix $A$ such that $A^2=-4I$? What would be a good way to improve this question - so that it no longer is missing context.

One thing I can think of is adding that it is easy to find complex matrix (and include the matrix in the post). I am not sure whether this would be a sufficient improvement, though.

Maybe the OP of the question on meta would have more positive view on "this awful crude room" after seeing that people who come here also try to improve questions when possible.

Maybe a link to a similar question for 3x3 matrices would count as context, too. (With adding the explanation that the same argument does not work in dimension 2.) Like this one: There is no real $3\times3$ matrix $A$ for which $A^2=-I$.

Any further suggestions?

@MarkMcClure: By the way, having just looked at your comments on the meta thread, I am curious to know what you think about the fact that a majority of PSQs come from students who want people here to do their homework for them, so that they can get credit for work that they did not do, and can obtain an unfair advantage over other students who do not attempt to cheat. Do you support such behaviour?

@Widawensen The question you mentioned was closed for missing context. You can see this in the banner saying: "This question is missing context or other details: Please improve the question by providing additional context, ..."

I asked here for suggestions what could be added and I have tried to add at least something in my recent edit. If you have some further ideas for improvements, you could edit the post - the chance that the question will survive might be better if it has at least some context.

@MartinSleziak There are plenty of such questions like these on MSE, some with very high highvoting. The question was complete and has many answers, so destroying it would also mean destroying much of human work.. once again thank you for you efforts..

@Widawensen Votes do not make a question better or worse. I wish to know what you think about cheaters, as well. Do you support cheating?

There are other ways to preserve good content, which have been amply discussed here and on Meta. These do not necessitate making a bad question into a good one.

@Widawensen: Furthermore, you would do well to refrain from random insinuations as you did in comments beneath your meta post.

The above post was reopened: timeline/revisions. Several votes came from reopen review.

@MartinSleziak Note that they came after you added content that did not come from the asker. Can you convince me that this question did not arise from the asker attempting to cheat on his/her graded homework/assignment?

@user21820 I do not support cheaters, but for God's sake this question was half-year old.. what advantage has the asking person now? Some people put their work into answers and their efforts should be honored. I understand better the situation which was a total surprise for me at the beginning. I don't want to quarrel I only want to understand a motivation..

@Widawensen I have somewhat different view on this than you have. But at the moment I am a bit busy, so I do not have that much time to discuss this. (And if you have a look at older discussions on meta you can find a lot about this.)

@Widawensen You may think that this is just an old question, but what you do not understand is the fact that cheaters abound on Math SE because they are enabled by answerers. They observe (correctly) that they do not need to put in any effort, as someone will improve their question for them and someone will give full solutions for them. Whether a question is upvoted/downvoted or old/new does not alter whether it is a good/bad question.

By answering completely or improving a bad question, old or not, it sends a signal that such questions (including new ones) are welcome on the site.

As I said, there are other ways of preserving good content while getting rid of bad questions.

And you should think carefully about answering poor questions, which no doubt contributes to cheaters finding this site a cheater-friendly place.

@user21820 So what to do with the effort of answering users ?, the deleted question is vanishing and it is impossible even to see your own answer. I have no means how to discern cheaters from non-cheaters - it is very difficult problem, someone can for example would know simply the answer for the problem he met when he was reading a book, it's very difficult to say what is the complete motivation for a given question..

@Widawensen Let me answer your questions one by one.

@user21820 What do you mean "one by one" ?

There are many different issues that you need to understand, and your comment contains different implicit questions.

@user21820 I don't say that I understand everything...

It is roughly agreed upon that a 1-line question is a bad one, whether or not it is difficult. Even the downvote button on the question includes "no research effort shown". I do not think you can say that the question we have been discussing shows zero research effort. There are some better questions where this becomes more subjective. But you can see this post for what is clearly the general consensus about what context can be provided.

This answers your implicit question about why such a question is considered a poor one regardless of its difficulty. This site is not Math Overflow.

Secondly, the fact that you admit "it's very difficult to say what is the complete motivation for a given question.." shows that indeed that context was lacking. The asker could easily have stated where the problem came from, and why he/she was interested in it. It could even sometimes be the case that the asker is asking the wrong question believing it to be what he/she wants but only the context reveals the real question.

Thirdly, concerning deleted content, if it cannot be found anywhere else on the internet or the site, and it is well-written and not crank output (there have been many cranks on Math SE) then I agree that it should be somehow preserved. And for the third time I'm saying there are other ways to do so other than to edit and re-open the lousy question. One can easily post a new good question (such as a generalization or a properly motivated question) and transfer the answer there.

Run-of-the-mill answers to lousy questions that have been repeated a thousand times on the site ad nauseum do not deserve to be kept at all. If you've been here for a while you ought to have seen many of these already, especially in basic calculus.

Fourthly, I did not say we have to discern cheaters and non-cheaters. I merely stated the fact that majority of PSQs (Please-Solve-Questions) are posted by cheaters.

You can say it is hence easy to filter out some cheaters simply by following the site guidelines in the first place! Namely, by not encouraging poor questions, cheaters will not have such a nice cheating spree here.

@user21820 But note that there were six persons, some with much higher reputation than me who decided to answer the question, so it should not be taken into account also their opinion? I understand that some can have a different point of view but should not we at least respect each other.

Fifthly, you can see posts of your own that have been recently deleted, by going to your Activity page; on the Answers tab at the bottom there should be a link to recently deleted answers. Same for question.

@user21820 I think maybe it could be a time when the question like that could be put on hold, but to start the procedure for the old one it seems to be a little exaggerated.. maybe one week should be a deadline for such procedure but it is only my feeling...

@Widawensen As stated already, answers (no matter how many) do not make the question become better. You clearly haven't seen the amount of junk on Math SE (since you can't see deleted posts yet).

If I have left any of your implicit questions unanswered, please ask them explicitly.

@user21820 @user21820 My opinion on the matter is, honestly, not fully formed. As a teacher of mathematics, I most certainly find it a bit irritating that some users expect their HW done for them. So I sympathize do with you. In fact, I've voted to close many such questions myself.

Having said that, I don't see any reason to assume that most PSQs are attempts at cheating; they might simply arise from an attempt to understand a HW problem that was not assigned for collection. I also think that the sheer volume and variety of questions that we see here implies that the objective of generating a well organized collection of problems and answers is futile. I think the efforts here are, mostly, just a colossal waste of time.

@MarkMcClure I don't assume that PSQs are cheating attempts. However, it's just a statistical fact that they mainly are, which only supports the viewpoint that PSQs should not be condoned.

As for efforts here being a waste of time, it's a pity you feel that way.

I felt that in the early days of Math SE it was of much higher quality, in part due to lower ratio of homework questions to interesting questions.

@user21820 I understand better your attitude now, it seems to me a little too idealistic, I'm a more liberal in attitude towards weakers than me , maybe because I'm not a professional mathematician..

@MarkMcClure: By the way, it surely cannot be a compendium or an organized collection. That I agree; it's futile.

@Widawensen Yes perhaps I'm too idealistic.

@Widawensen: I do push for certain ideals if I think they are good and achievable, but in the end if the community wants to do things a certain way, I obviously have to accept it or leave. That's just the way it is.

@user21820 Well, to be clear - I don't feel that all efforts here are a waste of time. I've had a great time participating in StackExchange for a long time and generally enjoy it. I simply think that it's generally futile to try to mold it to one's expectations. It is what it is. :)

@MarkMcClure Yeap!

Something other is also not good in this serial downvoting of answers in order to delete "weak" question, that is - it is somehow hidden activity which can be coordinated of which I was unaware... such procedures could be as transparent as possible.. I would fell much more comfortable if downvoting would be somehow explained even under disguised nickname..

@Widawensen Answers do not need to be downvoted in order to delete poor questions, but some users do downvote anyway.

I can sympathize with some of those downvoters who feel that the only way to counter the cheaters is to discourage enablers. After all, if people still answer poor questions, cheaters still can get their homework done before their question is deleted.

So we are living in imperfect world, even mathematics doesn't lead, as we see, to the perfectness..

@Widawensen Well, mathematics can never lead to perfectness. Godel 'showed' that. =P

@user21820 One more illusion ;)

o/ @amWhy

@JohnMa @amWhy @Did: One more vote for 3.

@JohnMa All gone. And did you have a look at the ones I linked?

@user21820 gone!

@XanderHenderson \o

hello