tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (disappearing question)

Tyler Lawson comments on "disappearing question" (7901)

Tyler Lawson — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 10:31:14 -0700

I just meant to suggest a common thread, i.e. patience.

Harry Gindi comments on "disappearing question" (7891)

Harry Gindi — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 07:19:50 -0700

I don't follow, but yes! Of course, I didn't mean that the field of algebra is a desert.

Tyler Lawson comments on "disappearing question" (7890)

Tyler Lawson — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 07:08:03 -0700

@Harry: Didn't you _just_ write a comment about needing to spend time in the desert of abstract algebra in order to appreciate the enlightenment at the end?

Harry Gindi comments on "disappearing question" (7884)

Harry Gindi — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 03:28:24 -0700

Whenever I hear all of you cool guys talking about the perks of having over 10k rep, I want to start reputation whoring again. =(

Kevin Buzzard comments on "disappearing question" (7883)

Kevin Buzzard — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:22:07 -0700

@Emerton: No I didn't follow the route you took! I see the question, for the first time, following this route.

OK so paradox resolved. I had assumed that everything in tools->links was accessible in other ways, so never used it. And Scott/Anton are just more privileged, so more ways work for them.

Sorry to make so much noise about something that turned out to be trivial. I was always doing tools->delete and tools->close. The moral appears to be that there's more than one thing that can reasonably be called the "deleted posts menu": tools->delete (which doesn't show it) and tools->links->recently deleted posts (which does).

Scott Carnahan comments on "disappearing question" (7880)

Scott Carnahan — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:17:49 -0700

Okay, I see it in tools-land now that I'm using the "links" menu instead of the "delete" menu.

Emerton comments on "disappearing question" (7879)

Emerton — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 20:43:15 -0700

Dear Pete,

Just to confirm: I also have a unique way to find this post, via links, then recently deleted posts. I also can't see it under the deleted heading.

So it seems as if the non-moderator 10k users have a unique way to find this post.

Kevin, just to be pedantic, did you in fact follow the route we took (as opposed to looking directly under the deleted heading)?

Pete L. Clark comments on "disappearing question" (7878)

Pete L. Clark — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 20:36:29 -0700

@Qiaochu: no, I think you're right. I had guessed that a little after I wrote my post, but I got tired of revising it. Still, it doesn't explain everything...

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "disappearing question" (7877)

Qiaochu Yuan — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 20:31:17 -0700

@Pete: Same, same, and same. From reading this thread it looks like Scott and Anton are the only people who can see deleted posts on user pages, which can presumably be explained by their moderator status. Or am I missing somebody?

Pete L. Clark comments on "disappearing question" (7875)

Pete L. Clark — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 20:07:42 -0700

To add to Emerton's comment: it seems that the description "deleted posts menu" is ambiguous. Like Matt, I saw (and still see) Aaron Mazel-Gee's post by going to tools, then links, then recently deleted posts. I do not see it under the deleted heading on the tools menu.

Added: I can't see any deleted posts on any user pages. I didn't realize until just now that other >10K nonmoderators could do so. That would certainly be nice.

What the heck's going on here?

Emerton comments on "disappearing question" (7873)

Emerton — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 16:34:20 -0700

Just to add a data point: under tools, and then links, and then recently deleted posts, I was able to find this question (in the fifth place earlier, at the same time that Pete found it there, but further down now).

Added: Interestingly, I don't seem to be able to find this question from Mazel-Gee's user page, but only from via the deleted posts list (via tools, then links). This seems to be in contrast to Anton's situation, and seems like a weird inconsistency.

Kevin Buzzard comments on "disappearing question" (7856)

Kevin Buzzard — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 12:23:59 -0700

@Anton: I am well aware that for people who can see the post there are many ways to get to it ;-) I am logged in as me, I have "tools" displayed as an option at the top of the page, so I am known to be a 10k user. I go to Mazel-Gee's user page. I click on "stats" and then "newest", and I see that his newest question was "stably isomorphic groups" asked on the 28th of July. Go figure :-) This is just a bug report really. I'll take screenshots if anyone is really interested. Anton: you're welcome to log in as me if you want to try and replicate the problem. I just tried logging out and in again and this didn't fix anything. Do you want me to report this at meta.SE or something? Probably the answer will be "we're too busy thinking about 2.0 which will probably fix this issue and many others" or something...

On the other hand, thanks for supplying the link to the question. Despite all the clues from people above, I still couldn't find the link, until you posted it explicitly.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "disappearing question" (7852)

Anton Geraschenko — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 11:55:33 -0700

It's http://mathoverflow.net/questions/34057/in-general-do-obstructions-to-good-things-being-forced-to-happen-live-in-lower. Finding questions that have been deleted by the owner is pretty tough because they don't show up in the list of recently deleted posts (except if you're Pete?). I found this by looking at Aaron Mazel-Gee's user page and sorting his questions by "newest".

Kevin Buzzard comments on "disappearing question" (7844)

Kevin Buzzard — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 10:53:53 -0700

No apology needed Pete. I still can't see the question. I've looked in

http://mathoverflow.net/tools?tab=delete&daterange=last7days

and

http://mathoverflow.net/tools?tab=close&daterange=last7days

and

http://mathoverflow.net/users/303?tab=recent#sort-top

Note that this last one (Mazel-Gee's "recent" page) says (for me) that his last action was on July 28th, where he revised the question "stably isomoprhic groups" by extending/clarifying the question and deleting 4 characters in the body. I'm writing this on Sunday August 1st at about 11am Berkeley time (6:50pm London time). In particular Scott says he can't see it in "deleted posts" or "close votes" but can see it via Mazel-Gee---I can't even see it via Mazel-Gee. I am wondering if this is turning into a bug report: that's why I put so much trivial detail into this post.

@Pete: you say 5th from top in deleted posts menu. Looking at

http://mathoverflow.net/tools?tab=delete&daterange=last7days

I only see 4 recently deleted posts:

yesterday Why do we care about quantum entanglement? [closed]
yesterday Mathematics of Inception [closed]
Jul 28 at 5:15 question about prime number [closed]
Jul 28 at 4:58 About RH: one way to extend RH and insight RH [closed]

Kevin

PS: of course, this is not a big deal. It's just an oddity I thought I'd report on.

Pete L. Clark comments on "disappearing question" (7841)

Pete L. Clark — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 07:00:56 -0700

Well that's weird. I just checked again and I can still see it: it is fifth from the top in the deleted posts menu. Apologies to Kevin for believing the website rather than him!

Scott Carnahan comments on "disappearing question" (7840)

Scott Carnahan — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 05:59:18 -0700

I am looking at the deleted posts menu, and the question is does not appear for me. It also doesn't appear in the list of questions with close votes, even though Aaron Mazel-Gee voted to close. I had to navigate to his user page to find the question.

Pete L. Clark comments on "disappearing question" (7839)

Pete L. Clark — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 03:46:07 -0700

The question's title was: In general, do obstructions to “good” things being forced to happen live in lower dimensions?

It was posted by Aaron Mazel-Gee and then deleted by him. Apparently the question was based on some kind of miscommunication.

Kevin, since you have access to moderator tools, you can look at all deleted posts in reverse chronological order (i.e., starting from the most recently deleted). Aaron's post appears there.

(Added later): rereading your response, I see that you have already looked there. But I'm guessing that you've just missed it.

Andrea comments on "disappearing question" (7838)

Andrea — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 03:33:50 -0700

The question was certainly there. The flase claim was the following: if G is a group and H is a subgroup of least (finite) index, then H is normal in G. It was then corrected by Damiano to the usual statement: if G is a finite group and H is a subgroup of index p, where p is the least prime dividing |G|, then H is normal.

As far as I remember, the OP tried to make some connection with the Hurewicz theorem on the isomorphism between homology and homotopy groups, and tried to figure out a general statement about obstructions living in small dimensions.

Kevin Buzzard comments on "disappearing question" (7837)

Kevin Buzzard — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:59:14 -0700

@Hailong: Yes! In the original question the questioner basically said that if the statement from group theory turned out to be false then it "bust the whole thing" or some such phrase, and so I thought I might have bust it but knew that there was a chance something would rise from the ashes. If the question really was busted and the questioner just deleted it (which struck me as not unreasonable), I would still expect to be able to see it (because 10k users can see deleted questions). I wanted to see the question, even if deleted, to see if the questioner had made any comments before deleting it.

Hailong Dao comments on "disappearing question" (7836)

Hailong Dao — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:48:13 -0700

Is that the "busting the whole thing" comment? I dreamed of that one too (and was looking for that thread as well).

Kevin Buzzard comments on "disappearing question" (7835)

Kevin Buzzard — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:39:44 -0700

I am a 10k user so can see deleted questions. But I am baffled by the following thing (completely trivial: doesn't matter if I never get unbaffled). Someone---I think it was Aaron Mazel-Gee---asked an interesting-looking question which, right at the beginning, said something like "I heard that [some random statement in group theory] was true; here's a question generalising it". But the statement in group theory didn't seem true as it stood. I posted a comment giving a counterexample to the statement in group theory, and today I looked for the question to see if it had mutated to take the counterexample into account. But I couldn't find it.

So either I am making a slip (certainly not impossible!) or the question has been deleted in a more robust way than I have ever seen. I can't find it on the list of questions, I can't find it in the list of deleted questions (under "tools" that the 10k users can access), and in my user activity under "recent" I can't find my comment.

Did I just dream the whole thing? I was expecting to find the question, but deleted and shown with a red background.