tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (A Silly Question about Silly Questions)

Joel Reyes Noche comments on "A Silly Question about Silly Questions" (22759)

Joel Reyes Noche — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 05:39:09 -0800

"Silly" questions usually have a negative score or are closed or put on hold.

quid comments on "A Silly Question about Silly Questions" (22758)

quid — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 03:39:12 -0800

There are certainly some signs suggesting that a question is not really up to the standards of MO. However, I would caution against basing decisions only on this. By contrast one can use these signs to filter for those questions that might need closer inspection as they might need to be put on hold. (Or, individually one can also decide to ignore them.)

Some signs:

Weird usage of tags.
Extremely poor/sloppy spelling and strange usage of interpunctuation marks (already in the title). (Yes, I spell badly, too, I know :-))
Self-agrandizing insistance on the relevance of the question, and more generally most forms of exaggeration.

Now that I try to write this I find it a bit hard to pin down the reasons. But, I know it when i see it.

Saint Georg comments on "A Silly Question about Silly Questions" (22757)

Saint Georg — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 02:57:11 -0800

In MathOverflow we have many silly questions every day. We try to flag, edit, close and delete them but they come once again and waste users time more and more. My questions are about them.

Q1. Is there a short way to find out silliness of a question without reading it and wasting time?

Q2. Are there some syntactical indicators to show silliness of a particular question?