Not signed in (Sign In)

Vanilla 1.1.9 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.

Etiquette: Deleting CW answers

Bottom of Page

1 to 11 of 11

  1.  
    • CommentAuthorwanax
    • CommentTimeDec 17th 2011
     
    Mark Sapir posted a facetious answer to the following question:

    http://mathoverflow.net/questions/83675/numbers-whose-powers-approach-integers-closed

    Since the answer was CW, I decided to edit the answer to replace what was there with a sensible answer.
    (The question was not the greatest, but it was related to some interesting mathematics. I may not have answered if the question
    was simply closed (a comment mentioned Pisot numbers) but in the circumstances...)
    Anyway, it seems that Mark Sapir had second thoughts and deleted his answer, even though the content was now (essentially) 100% written
    by someone else. Software questions aside, I would like to suggest that marking an answer as "CW" relinquishes editorial control over the answer,
    and that it is poor form to subsequently delete the question when others have made possibly substantial efforts. (On this occasion the edit only
    took me 5 minutes or so, but I can imagine other scenarios...)
  2.  

    I think the question should be reopened, now that the author has clarified that the trivial cases are excluded from consideration. What do people think of undeleting and locking the answer now that it says something useful?

  3.  

    Scott, Doug Zare's comment that this isn't a research-level question has seven upvotes. It seems (to me at least) like the question needs to be improved if there's going to be much motivation to reopen.

  4.  

    While I agree in general with wanax that answers with significant contribution from others should not be deleted, I think his/her comment on the answer is counter-productive. If the question is reopened at all may I suggest that the comment be removed?

  5.  

    Ryan, it is far from clear that those seven upvotes are for the "not research-level" sentence rather than the "It's disappointing to see the trivial answers of magnitude less than 1 repeated." or the actual mathematical content.

    1 minute later: I see that the question as written has the straightforward answer "yes", but one could reasonably edit it to a question about the properties of the set of such reals, and then it becomes substantially less trivial (as Wanax indicates).

    • CommentAuthormarkvs
    • CommentTimeDec 17th 2011
     
    The sole purpose of my answers was to make the OP fix the question. Now that the question is fixed, there is no purpose in my answer, so I closed it (together with a wanax's answer that is plagiarized from well known Web sources, and his impolite comment). I do not think it is a research level question because the answer can be easily found on Google (especially after fedya's comment). It may be made better, though, but it is up to OP to change the question.
  7.  

    Sure, but it isn't Wanax's question. It's up to the question-asker to ask the question they want to ask. Wanax could always ask the less trivial question Wanax refers to, rather than people manipulating the original question to be what they want.

    • CommentAuthorwanax
    • CommentTimeDec 17th 2011 edited
     
    Let me repeat that I am not advocating that the question be reopened (on which my feelings are agnostic), but more the general principles involved.
    (If someone does reopen the question, feel free to delete my comment; I thought it would seem strange that a sensible answer would have -3 votes, thus
    the remark. Clearly I let the frustration of people rushing to point out something is trivial when a moments consideration would suggest that there might be something more interesting under the surface came through in my comment...)

    markvs, your feeble attempt at an explanation for your facetiousness falls short. And your accusations of plagiarism are mildly embarrassing, given that my answer linked to the wikipedia discussion. Presumably you deleted the answer because, even though you have a history of being rude, you yourself have a very thin skin.
  9.  

    I have undeleted the answer, and deleted Wanax's comment, but the question remains closed. If there is nothing else to discuss, perhaps this discussion can be closed as well.

    • CommentAuthortheojf
    • CommentTimeDec 18th 2011
     

    Hi Scott,

    Before you close the discussion, do let me register that I don't think the question should be re-opened without more improvements. I have left some comments in this direction on the original question.

    Except that right now, the question itself is locked. Does this prevent also the OP from editing it?

    Anyway, the answer is probably the best possible, so the whole discussion is somewhat moot.

    Theo

    • CommentAuthorquid
    • CommentTimeDec 18th 2011
     

    IMO, the owner of a CW answer should still have some control. In particular, I think that in this case it should be Mark Sapir who decides whether he wants this completely rewritten answer attached to his profile; I can see reasons why he would not want this. (If somebody thinks the answer should be preserved, it could be recreated, unlock, open, answer, reclose. A bit complicated but doable.)

    Whether or not it was a good idea to give the answer originally is orthogonal to this; but IMO editing an answer to turn it into something completely different was against standard etiquette in the first place. (I did not see the deleted comment.)

1 to 11 of 11

  1.  
Back to Discussions Top of Page