@BillDubuque I can point to several democratic institutions/procedures that, under your point of view, would be dictatorial if you think that quid's previous comments to yours is very far from democratic.

@AloizioMacedo Not relevant to democracy here.

@BillDubuque Please define "democracy here". Because it seems to be fundamentally different from democracy as is commonly understood for you to make that observation.

Also, if you want to keep discussing, this should probably be in Math Meta Chat.

@BillDubuque The anti-PSQ faction has been trying to reach a compromise for may be seven years now. It is the pro-PSQ faction that won't budge at all. For the most part they don't even show up at the peace talks. You are one of the rare exceptions to that, but I don't recall you drafting a compromise suggestion either. More often, think Brian Scott, the pro-PSQ folks have the "my way or highway" atttude. I have gradually grown to develop a similar but opposite stance.

Anyway, a lean peace agreement might still be better than a continuous war IF if is enforced strictly. Otherwise, I move to declare all homework questions off-topic. Physics does it.

@user170039 Pointless to list names, I think. Read the relevant meta threads. Actually this discussion should take place in meta as opposed to here.

Anyway, the factions fluctuate, and are not all of one mind.

Search Meta with the buzzword PSQ

@user170039 Earlier threads used terms like "homework" and "no effort"

Have "fun" @user170039 :-/ The most heated discussions are linked to each other. That should help the search.

← 148 messages moved from CRUDE

@BillDubuque: More about the difficulties in organizing real peace talks: I think @quid hit the nail on the head in a comment to my meta post. The PSQ-answerers by and large are not interested in any policies. They are only interested in their own posts, and only come to meta to complain, if they cannot stand something. This disconnect is a real problem, and there's plenty of blame around.

I'm sure most of the participants would be reasonable about this if we talked it over face-to-face. The tragedy is that the site is not really conducive of such discussions. We don't have a suitable venue. The pro-PSQ people come to meta one or at most two at a time. And thus give the appearance of only talking for themselves. Furthermore, given that they are not used to searching for old posts in main (my main peeve nowadays), they are not used to searching for old posts in meta either.

Consequently initially their meta posts are met with a slew of referrals to old discussions on the same theme. @BillDubuque, you are the exception in the sense that of the "opposite faction" (not really an accurate description because the opinions on PSQs truly are very diverse) you are among the very few who actually follows meta actively.

I would like to have a venue (a single meta thread would do), where the frequent PSQ-answerers would agree to come and talk this over. I still have some of that naïve optimisim that a compromise could be found. But, for a compromise to have any permanent value, it should be one that has enough support. And, starting from this day becomes more or less normative. So that the current (and future) answerers (and caretakers) find it binding.

Hello

@close-deleteautomaton You left a comment on several rather old answers saying just: "Answer on a PSQ."

I think you have got a good reponse in the comments under Jyrki Lahtonen's answer. I will add also links to some relevant posts on meta: Is it good practice to analyse past questions by today standards? and Why close old questions with accepted answers using the “no context” reason?

Of course, you are perfectly entitled to cast your vote to close those questions (and even post the link to the question in CRUDE) if you consider that as the right course of action.

I am not really sure where invitation to a chat room (be it manual or automatic) is displayed. Probably in the global inbox?

← 1 message moved from CRUDE

Did you get an invitation here?

No.

Or does it not work because you're already here?

That's very likely.

Post something random here and let's try another room you're not currently in.

=D

→ 1 message moved to This is the Realm of Simply Beautiful Art

I have added screenshots of the notification I got in the target chatroom: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/51337/2018/12/9 (At the moment where the message was moved, I was not present in any chat rooms, I am not sure to which extent this influences whether or not the user gets the invitation.)

@BillDubuque the analogy I see with Cantor here is that it is a person attempting to impose his will on others because what they do is not in the image he created. He built a castle and didn't want any other castles nearby. That's the part I find hypocritical.

sorry for the typo - at the moment when, not where

Notably I agree with banning for users which repetetly post low or poor quality questions without showing any intention to improve their way to be involved in the community. I hope my position is now clear.

I so much convinced that closing and deleting for poor posed question is right that I think the same criteria should be extended for older questions. But here who condamn the new poor question want to protect the old ones. That's really a point logically not clear to me.

But when askers improve their initially poor question showing a good attitude to improve themself, I think we should be more tolerant and reward them by reopening and upvoting, if the case, their questions. Otherwise we are simply closing the comunity to a large part of new potential contributors.

To give a contrete example of such cases, recently that OP was improved by the asker himself and then reopened. After that one "anti-PSQ" fellow had the great idea to roll back the OP to a previous poor version and now the question is going to be closed again. That's exactly what we shouldn't do in such cases. The new contributors aimed to improve themselves should be protected with care and not punished.

I would like @JyrkiLahtonen to have your thought about that specific case. Indeed what is also not productive, in my opinion, is generalize the complexity of the reality and discuss these kind of issues for general or hypotetical cases. I think we need to discuss our different positions and thoughts case by case and without select any faction.

@gimusi To be honest, I am not really sure what was the motivation behind the rollback. Since this specific question was mentioned, I'll just add that there were several messages about it in CRUDE.

@MartinSleziak I don't know what the motivation was, that's my own guess at the moment. I've asked to the user who rolled back to the worse version to explain his motivation but I haven't received reply up to now on that.

In any case, that not change so much what I want to discuss and suggest here, that is to be strict and sever with users that repeatetly post poor questions only to obtain answer but patient, friendly and kind with users that have a good attituted to improve themselves.

If we don't agree on that I think that it is completey vain to start with any discussion about what we should do to improve the site.

@gimusi You're not consistent. For example, you answered an earlier question by the same user, even before Mefitico's comment, which means you did nothing to guide the user to know the guidelines for asking good questions. Also, you didn't vote to close it, nor were you "strict and severe" with the same user on the (at least) 3 subsequent posts.

@user21820 I'm not claiming that I'm perfect and I'm open to discuss ineed case by case. For the question in hand, as you can noticed I've just given a hint, not the solution which was given closely by another user which indeed had the answer accepted. Do you think that I could'n give the full answer in the same way. I 've decided instead to give only a hint and then await for a reply form the asker. Once a full aswer has been given of course the process could become vain.

But I agree with you we should comunicate to the asker to improve their question also in that case.

Moreover I have to clarify that yes I'm not currently involved in closing and deleteing for the simple reason that currently thse kind of action are carried out following criteria I don't agree with. But I'm in favour of closure and deletion for the cases I already mentioned.

@user21820 Thanks for the good example. That's precisely the kind of constructive discussion which in my opinion can help to compare our different positions on concrete cases also with some autocriticism.

@gimusi I noticed that you only gave a hint. That's better than some other times. In any case, it's clear that people take advantage of Math SE until they are stopped. Some have continued like this for hundreds of questions (such as Paul, h.s, jasmine among many many others).

@user21820 What I claim is that full asnwer are bad as simple suddenly closure/deletion are bad, we need at first to involve the asker in a contructive way. When the askers are clearly bad contributors, without any effort to improve along time, I'm totally in favour to punish them with permanent banning.

@gimusi Closure is never sudden; the right way to use the site is to quickly close bad questions. As for deletions, I am fine with waiting if and only if there are no complete solutions given in the comments or answers. Otherwise quick deletion is the only way to prevent rep-farmers from taking advantage of the system.

And we have already compromised somewhat; most of us wait about 2 days for closed poor posts to be improved before voting to delete, unless it has answers. Last time some people including myself felt that 1 day is more than enough.

@user21820 I think we could discuss on the best way to obtain the result. But a first important step is understand that we share the same scope.

@gimusi the purpose of these sites is to provide readily usable answers. These are not tutoring or "help" sites.

@gimusi Well, by your own statement, you ought to vote to close that question then. Why haven't you?

@user21820 For the same reason you don't vote to repoen the improved OP.

@gimusi That's false and presumptuous.

I didn't vote to reopen because you had already answered before the first substantial edit, which contained pretty much the same content as your first answer. So the asker didn't actually provide his/her own work in that first edit.

It is hence not at all a good example of improving a post after closure.

@quid Sorry I first finish with @user21820 otherwise it is really confusing for me.

No problem. I did not plan to start a discussion.

@user21820 I'm not accusing you, I mean that I'm not against closure and deletion for such kind of poor questions from users which are not aimed to improve their questions. That's doesn't imply that I'm currently involved in closure and deletion for many reasons, but I could be in the future if somethig will change.

Let's put it very clearly. You are not acting according to your statement "I'm in favour of closure and deletion for the cases I already mentioned.". I, on the other hand, never once said that I thought that question you asked about in CRUDE was worthy of reopening, though neither did I vote to close it again after it was reopened.

So don't say things like "for the same reason you ..." when it is not even true.

@user21820 Ok, my bad, I didn't mean to accuse you of that.

Ok.

@user21820 That's also fine we can indeed have different point of view on a single case to be closed or reopened, I don't force anyone to do that. I claim that when a asker show a good attitude to be take part into the community we could/should be more tolerant.

@user21820 I'm acting according to that rules in the sense that I fully accept closure and deletion for questions which are not improved. I've never complained about that and I'm in favour of that. Even if I'm not directly involved in that process.

@gimusi In my opinion, it does not count if they are improved only after answers are posted. As has been stated many times, you cannot give a complete answer to a lousy question and then edit the question to spruce it up (often putting words into the asker's mouth) and then claim that the question should not be deleted because it's now "improved".

It's undeniable that what I described is essentially taking advantage of the system. My criteria (stated above) for closing and deletion deals with this. Yours doesn't seem to.

Anyway, I'm in a hurry and got to go. Sorry for leaving halfway.

@user21820 Ok I hope we can discuss that another time more deeply. Thanks, Bye

@gimusi The campaign to remove repetitions of homework questions, the badly phrased ones in particular, will continue. Answering them will attract the wrong kind of material here, so the campaign to remove those answers will also continue. There may be some room for compromise, but you cannot have it all your way.

Just so that we are not too harsh on gimusi - or at least that we do not give impression that they are the only user answering problematic questions - I will mention my most recent answer: Closed subspace and quotient norm.

I have answered the question fully aware that it is a PSQ and it is most likely going to be closed and deleted. But after mentioning some hints in comments first, it seemed unlikely that the OP is able to edit the question to satisfactory form. Discussing in chat was not an option either, since the OP was below 20 reputation points at the time.

Moreover, some discussion between me and user who posted the other answer already started in the comments. So I posted an answer simply because it was more comfortable than discussing stuff only in comments or only in chat.

After that, I have posted at least a few comments under the question with some links to meta and suggesting some possibilities how to add context.

So we could say that I have posted the answer mostly for me (since I found question interesting) and for the other answerer who tried to solve the problem unsuccessfully. I count with the fact that most likely this post might be eventually deleted. But at the same time I hope that the comments might help the OP to post better questions in the future.

@JyrkiLahtonen So if you say that I handled this question badly - because this might encourage the OP to post questions without context - you are probably right. OTOH I think that this might be useful for the other user who interacted with that question. And I did my best to explain to the OP how the question could be improved.

Probably other users around here know the feeling - it is sometimes difficult not to share a solution after having spent some time thinking about it.

I will post here also the comments which I left to the OP:

@JyrkiLahtonen If you want me to participate then you'll need to find a more neutral room (a couple of the "owners" of this room have previously censored my comments that they disagreed with - so I won't waste my time in any such room). Further. I think the SE chat software is so crappy to be almost useless. If someone knows a better chat platform that solves these problems then I'll happily join the chat. Otherwise it is far too painful...

@BillDubuque I quite understand. In our meta the meta-activists will soon take over the soapbox for genuine dialogue to take place. The SE staff could set up a town hall meeting, but they are also low on resources. I think that what we are seeing here is not unlike "road rage" - normally reasonable people failing to take others' point of view into account. The age of internet.

@JyrkiLahtonen If someone creates another room where the owners don't include PSQ extremists who have no qualms about censoring opposing views then I will give it a shot. But there are still other problems posed by the extremely crappy chat software (e.g. random actions by drive-by network mods being tricked into doing stuff by nefarious flags, etc), limits on comment length, limited time to edit, etc. I can't recall hating any piece of software more than SE chat. It is complete and utter crap.

Anyone interested in discussing such matters by email (or mailing-list) is welcome to conatct me at WGD (my initials) at alum.mit.edu

@BillDubuque how about you create a room?

I'm a astonished at proposal to discuss things elsewhere (ie, not on SE resources). This does not align well with the transparency that would be desirable.

@BillDubuque gonna need to know what that G is

@quid It's certainly transparent if everyone is welcome

@AlexanderGruber Gauss

@BillDubuque ahhhh. Your parents didnt want a poet, huh?

@BillDubuque that's such a gross oversimplification.

@quid Gauss lived to simplify

@BillDubuque irrelevant.

@quid WHat happened to your sense of humor?

@BillDubuque what's that?

@JyrkiLahtonen The problem has more to do with the platform than the net. The gamification forces matters to be hopelessly entangled with gnarly matters such as ego, Until everyone recognizes this and places all their cards on the table it will be difficult if not impossible to solve well. If you can't get past the fact that Dr. xyz will gain 10x your rep by picking cherries and you are deadset on policies to stop it then there is no hope - because that'll flush the baby with the bathwater.

Rep is the root of all evil

That's a royal "you" above

@JyrkiLahtonen Do you really think that the wrong kind of material you don’t like will be stopped in that way? There will be always million di new students in the world and thousands of them will come here and hundreds of users will give hints, full answers or duplicates to their questions. I think that the present strategy you suggest is really not effective to obtain any good result for the site but hate and misunderstanding.

I agree with you that answers to “homework questions, the badly phrased ones in particular” shouldn’t be given. But your claim is too generic as it is formulated and it would be discussed in more detail. Why we shouldn’t give attention to homework questions when properly posed? How can you distinguish a homework question form a not-homework question? Who decide that? There are so many things to discuss we can’t resolve anything with your war declaration. Really It is not helpful.

If you want to discuss further I am at your disposal.

@BillDubuque @JyrkiLahtonen If Rep is the root of all evil why do not eliminate that? Why it is necassary have that number attached to our avatar?. It could be a number as other present for example only in the user page. Why not eliminate that information and use something different. I really do not consider that as a real parameter to evaluate the skills of users.

@gimusi Because that is one feature that is not community-designed or moderated in any way, but rather part of the content of the StackExchange platform. Especially as they have gone to homogenize the style of various sites, there is unfortunately no world in which we are allowed to change something as pivotal as reputation-related mechanics.

I agree with you it does not serve a particularly important or valuable purpose.

Well, that's not quite true. Gamification is present on many websites with the specific intent of triggering dopamine release and therefore keeping engagement high - "people" (writ large, not referring to any one person) like watching their numbers go up. It keeps them on the website.

So it's important to the company StackExchange, as it's part of how they make money off of the website: keep people here, keep them engaged, have them look at ads on SO / use the job feature / whatever.

But your/my/Bill's/probably everyone who's not unreasonable/'s point is that it does nothing for mathematics, and I agree with that.

@MikeMiller I would try to evaluate at least the possibility to cancel that from the avatar and use some other way to indicate, in a generic form, the experience and contribution of an user on MSE.

@MikeMiller Anyone who used prior non-gamified platforms (e.g. sci.math) knows well that gamification is not needed to motivate contributions. Many of the most prolific and knowledgeable contributors here were likewise there.

@BillDubuque Sorry, I hope it didn't read like I was saying otherwise. I'm just saying that's the StackExchange perspective.

@gimusi You could post something on Meta.SE, but I suspect it would not go over well.

@MikeMiller Why, who would not be in favour of that?

The company? People who actually do care about those? (While I am not one, I assure you many are.)

Like I said, you can feel free. I certainly don't object to the proposal.

There's just an infinitesimal chance of it happening.

@MikeMiller I'll ask to @MartinSleziak is already exists some Meta post on that topic with some good proposal.

Good idea, he has an incredible memory and search skills.

(I am also rather confident they will not make such a major stylistic change on a single site, given that they have recently been moving to make the styles on every site on the network the same.)

Yes, that would never occur on SE. But likely much better designed platforms will appear in the near future

I feel like I've been hearing that for years. We'll see... If that's truly so, it probably wouldn't be hard to get me to move.

@MikeMiller To clarify my position, I look at Rep as a measure of the contribution given here (for me in time and answers) but I think it shouldn't be considered the most important index and of course not the only one. Why aren't others kind of countribution recognized at the same way, for example users active in editing, in chat etc..

I think that there is something wrong in the system currently adopted, it is of course unfair.

Unfair as it may be, institutional inertia is a very powerful force.

@MikeMiller Personally I like to have my own record of upvoted and accepted answer but I don't feel the needing to share that with the community. I'll think about that, I would like to discuss with someone else intersted in order to formulate a proposal.

Maybe we would enjoy much more without that plummet at the neck!

@BillDubuque it feels like you keep saying that since many years. Yet then each natural number is small compared to almost all others, so I guess it makes perfect sense.

@quid If the mods start banning infinitesimals it might happen sooner than later!

@BillDubuque if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

But it's curious what event you seem to consider as about equally likely as that new much better site become a reality.

@gimusi that's all good and well, but how about you try to focus on the quality of your contribution keeping the feedback you got in mind. Not millions of students and hundreds of other users, just you take care about what you contribute. For example, you could give complete answers to questions that are generally recognized as being deserving of such.

Instead of answering a great number of borderline questions with hints.

@quid Again, it's not necessary to leave your sense of humor at the door....

@BillDubuque oh, wow, that new site you keep mentioning over years, it was just a joke. I feel a bit silly now.

@quid Ok, you're back to your old tricks of putting words into the mouths of your opponents, sigh,.., bye

@BillDubuque sorry if I once again missed the point. Maybe you could express yourself in less subtle ways when conversing with me.

@quid My answer to "border line" questions with hints are motivated and I'm honestly conviced that they are the best thing to do. Really someone think that all bad questions here come because I give hints? And someone should explain to me why they are not good but hints by comments, full answers (sometimes given by comments) or duplicates are good. There is not a logical expanation for that.

@quid Moreover I know that my asnwers given to that questions have currently 0.001% possibility to survive and my hints is just an effort to ingage the (often) new contributor.

@quid Obviously the joke was about mods banning infinitesimals (the analogy I mentioned way above). In any case my point was that it often takes something extreme to finally set things in motion. If some mods really do start acting like dictators that may well do the trick.

@quid Moreover I always invite other users to do the same and do not give full suddenly answers to such questions.

@quid I spend many times with that, the fact that the answer is a simple hint doesn't mean that I don't work on that, sometimes also for hours, soliciting the asker to do the best to improve the question.

I've nothing to gain with that. I enjoy to help others student, that's all. I don't think it is against the rules and I always try to do my best with that.

@gimusi this type of exaggeration is not helpful. It is very clear that the numbers are way different.

@gimusi and how is that helpful? The site is for mostly full answers as I explained you.

@quid ok that was not a real datum!

@gimusi Do you ever search for dupes before answering questions, esp. questions that have obviously been asked in the past?

I can't reply to both at the same time. I start with quid but english is not my native language so sorry if I can't be fast and clear at all.

Please feel free to continue to discuss with Bill, I am about to leave anyway.

@quid I agree with that but when we face with a bad question but also with an HW well posed question I don't think that it is a good idea give suddenly a full answer. Ok...will continue of course, it is quite long to discuss I think.

@quid Happy horse riding...

@BillDubuque Wht search for a dupe when we face a not well posed question or a (possible) HW question. That does not avoid that more and more bad and HW questions are formulated.

It is stronlgy couterproductive give dupes in that cases.

It is one of the main contradictions I've found in many users here: be against a hint but be in favour to dupes containing full aswers.

It is really illogical to me.

@BillDubuque What I do often is to attach to my answers a link to useful dupes I know and can help the asker. Moreover in that way also the diffusion of the dupe is facilitate and the asker i encouraged to look also for that.

@BillDubuque Of course the serching for dupes would be encouraged befor that a question is formulated. I know that the system alredy do that but probably we could do something more on that. i had a discussion recently with @MartinSleziak on that topic.

@gimusi So you don't think it is a problem if many of the answers that you post are duplicates of older answers?

(that's a hypothetical question)

@BillDubuque It depends. When we face a not well posed question or a possible HW question I think that what we shouldn't do is to give a duplicate. That is bad as a full answer of course. Indeed asker not motivated instead to search dupes by themself will continue to pose bad answer awiting for the dupe. Do you agree with that?

@BillDubuque A reasonable belief at first glance... but when was the last time you heard someone talk about PhysicsOverflow?

It seems the barrier to "market-entry" of a new Q&A site is pretty high.

I thought the infinitesimal gag was funny.

@gimusi Thanks for explaining. I tend to think more globally - in terms of the impact of duplication on the site, vs. the impact on a single user. Certainly there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration. I was simply curious to learn your personal viewpoint.

@MikeMiller I haven't been following the Physics analogs. What happened there? Certainly there are large barriers, but they are not insurmountable.

@BillDubuque Of course, from the global point of view, we need to encourage the serching for duplicates directly by the askers that are solely interested to have an answer. That would be a really useful improvement.

@gimusi And everyone should read the FAQ, and EULAs.... Solutions need to take account of real user behavior, not ideal user behavior.

Sorry...EULAs?

End User Licence Agreement or something close to that.

The software licenses that no one reads - just like FAQs, site terms of service, etc

@MartinSleziak do we even have a handle how many users actually care about the answering of "problematic" questions? I've only seen maybe 5 or six ever object to it.

I'm not saying there aren't more out there, I've just not seen evidence of them.

@close-deleteautomaton five or six, come on. It may not be enormous numbers but please be a bit reasonable.

@quid do we have a handle on how many there are?

@close-deleteautomaton your question is ill-defined. What does "actually care" mean?

interpret any reasonable way you want to

It's clear it's way more than five to six, but if you want a more precise number you need to give preciser criteria.

@close-deleteautomaton many user sometimes vote to close for lack of context.

We could infer that they care somewhat that those questions do not stay on the site. I never made a list, but if you care you could do so.

Track the questions that get closed for that reason and write down the voters.

@quid Ok lets say there's a core of 10 people who close/delete these regularly. If the objective is genuinely to increase /maintain the quality of the repository of questions, then do you think that their efforts would raise the quality the greatest amount by a) improving answers to old questions, or b) closing / deleting new ones?

No we do not say that there is a core of 10 people, since there are way more.

There are some that are way more active than others but this does not mean that they do not care.

I'm not so sure

@close-deleteautomaton that's again ill-posed.

@close-deleteautomaton The matter is much more subtle. There is often a large gap between what some folks claim they object to - and the true reasons for such objections (which are often too embarrassing to admit publicly, e.g. they don't like that xyz has 10x higher rep by picking cherries). We can't solve the problem without getting to the heart of the matter

@BillDubuque TOTALLY

What we have here, is a bunch of people who have built a castle and now they don't like othere building new castles aroudn them.

It's totally natural, human instinct.

@BillDubuque or those that claim they're are here to help and to teach but actually they just need to boost their ego.

Indeed it's complex.

@BillDubuque By asking them to honestly answer how they think can best improve the repository of answers, i.e. by working to improve answers, or by this close/delete crusade, I'm trying to appeal to their good nature to look into their motivations.

@BillDubuque I think if these good people spent a quarter of their close/delete time revisiting old answers, improving them, they would have ten times the impact in improving the repository of answers.

@BillDubuque I hear them grumbling about rep-farming and I think "who cares, really". If people want to rep-farm then fine, farm the bejesus out of rep for all I care.

Some four years ago some people objected to two policies (IIRC) on Physics.SE: 1) an early version of the "Be Nice policy" that led to the banning of some users who were extremely combative (I remember one named Ron M. and do not remember the names of the others).

@MikeMiller how could you ever forget our good friend Dilaton!

2) I believe but am not sure (I have spent 0 energy checking) this was also tied to the introduction of the now-longstanding "no homework policy". Apologies if I am wrong.

At this point the site is basically dead. They did not get a critical mass of users to be convinced in the move.

@quid I'm not saying you are referring to me, but personally my aim is to learn from users that are more skilled than me and teach/help users which are less skilled than me. That indeed the Exchange part I like of the site! And that's the main reason why I'm here.

@AlexanderGruber by the I don't think you needed to delete those questions yesterday. (I couldn't say so at the time). I didn't really have much of an objection to them. I just wanted to invite some contemplation of how things were for some longstnding users when they first started out and reflection on how they used the site and the reasons why they stayed and made it a habit.

@gimusi A better search that actually searches mathjax would help with this

@quid Yes, as I emphasized above the interaction between gamification and ego greatly complicates matters. It would surely make for an interesting pyschological case study. These things are very hard to judge accurately. For example, I'd guess that ego plays little to no role with all of the prolific sci.math old-timers (Andre, Arturo, Brian, I, Israel, etc), but I can't be 100% sure about that since I've never met any of them.

But it's hard to imagine that anyone who is confident of their math abilities would gain much in terms of ego from this site.

OTOH, there is no doubt that there are many users who always dreamed of being a mathematician but never had the chance to do so, and success here no doubt does boost their ego.

@BillDubuque I wouldn't be so sure a seasoned old timer isn't interested in a nice ego massage from time to time. I imagine it would be quite satisfying to have a skill and to come and exercise it. The hallmark of such a person is their answers would be designed to make it look like the answering thereof had been simplicity itself.

Thereby to elicit the maximum degree of admiration

@close-deleteautomaton The sci.math old-timers I mentioned are all professional mathematicians (either in academia or industry). It's highly unlikely that they are motivated by anything ego-related (which prior behavior on sci.math supports, where there was no rep, badges, etc).

@BillDubuque I am pretty sure that ego plays/played a role for several of those. That's pretty clear form the interactions one can/could have. Another thing is to fight boredom or 'fill the void' etc. I agree on the observation regarding people that never managed to be mathematicians.

@quid Why do you believe that ego played a role?

@BillDubuque combination of assertiveness and defensiveness when being challenged, tendency to show off, etc.

@BillDubuque "which prior behavior on sci.math supports, where there was no rep, badges, etc" there was only ones ego to be fed...

@quid Could you please give some examples of what you mean? Often these matters are misunderstood. E.g. occasionally when someone mentions a beautiful generalization (because they think it has pedagogical value), they may be wrongly accused of doing so to "show off".

@quid How possibly can ephemeral sci.math answers feed an ego?