tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (What to do with answers to an off-topic question)

Jason comments on "What to do with answers to an off-topic question" (12711)

Jason — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 21:53:56 -0800

My suggestion about the comment was an alternative (or supplement if need be) to a downvote, and I absolutely agree with Scott that being nice is the key. A downvote can be very disheartening to any MO user, especially a new one. If the downvote goes unexplained, it also leaves the person guessing and may elicit "sympathy upvotes" anyway. Since the upvote is 5X more powerful anyway, the sympathy upvotes can easily negate any downvotes from a reputation standpoint.

I therefore very much favor gentle comments that make the point in the most innocuous way possible over downvotes. I think that words such as elementary are best avoided as well since they can have a very different connotation to people not involved in math research (i.e., elementary school math).

Harry Gindi comments on "What to do with answers to an off-topic question" (12710)

Harry Gindi — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 16:59:30 -0800

(Certainly don't make references to pigeons, for example...)

You say something fun and whimsical, then you take it away just like that. =(

Scott Morrison comments on "What to do with answers to an off-topic question" (12709)

Scott Morrison — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 14:06:30 -0800

I think a policy of "not feeding the pigeons" is generally considered the right plan, as long as we're nice about it! (Certainly don't make references to pigeons, for example...)

If you want to comment on "inappropriate" answers, remember that often the answerer wrote in good faith, and that you should be trying to offer helpful advice, not criticize. Further, often answers to too-easy questions come from members who've previously been lurking on MO, waiting for the opportunity of a question they're ready to answer. These are great people, who we want to encourage, and it doesn't help if we rain on their parade. We've seen lots of examples where people who've answered a too-easy question have responded well to a suggestion that they help the community by refraining from answering questions which are clearly going to be closed shortly.

Alex Bartel comments on "What to do with answers to an off-topic question" (12708)

Alex Bartel — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 05:15:58 -0800

Gerry, that's exactly where I was coming from.

Gerry Myerson comments on "What to do with answers to an off-topic question" (12707)

Gerry Myerson — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 03:33:47 -0800

Jason, I wouldn't favor a blanket policy of asking people to delete answers to closed questions. Sometimes people post "answers" that are probably quite opaque to the original poster but highly informative to those at the right level to learn from them. I guess I'm saying we should only encourage deletion of answers likely to be helpful to the original poster, which sounds kind of nasty, but it's where the logic takes me.

Jason comments on "What to do with answers to an off-topic question" (12706)

Jason — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:57:21 -0800

It may be good to simply leave the comment that if a question is closed for any other reason than "No longer relevant," you are expected to delete your answer. I don't know if this is consensus policy on MO, but if it is, then phrasing it this way seems to be the best way to go.

Alex Bartel comments on "What to do with answers to an off-topic question" (12705)

Alex Bartel — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:00:52 -0800

Gerry, I am not sure whether that's what I was thinking of. It seems that this situation is slightly different, because the inspection of the other questions and answers by the user in question tells me that he is unlikely to concur with the sentiment that the question was too elementary to be answered on this site. He has since left another answer that would seem very patronising if one didn't know his history. A little later, he deleted it again under the pressure of 2 downvotes, which makes me think that downvoting the answer to the linked question is probably to most efficient way to make it disappear. I'll see if this works...

Gerry Myerson comments on "What to do with answers to an off-topic question" (12704)

Gerry Myerson — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 22:56:11 -0800

Alex, I wonder if you're thinking of http://tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/819/am-i-a-bully/ which was about whether we should suggest that people delete answers to (certain) closed questions.

Ryan Budney comments on "What to do with answers to an off-topic question" (12703)

Ryan Budney — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 22:47:35 -0800

My understanding is some closed questions are kept and some deleted. If the question is eventually deleted, it doesn't really matter what else we do. But presumably homework-level problems are eventually deleted. But I'm not sure how that works -- I'm guessing it's a discretionary thing for 10k+ users.

Alex Bartel comments on "What to do with answers to an off-topic question" (12702)

Alex Bartel — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 22:08:57 -0800

I vaguely remember seeing a discussion on meta along the same lines, but I haven't been able to find it. This question was closed as too localised, but a few minutes prior to closure, it received an answer that points to an undergraduate group theory book. The person who answered has also asked a fair few very elementary questions in the past few days. If the rationale behind closing is to not encourage these types of questions, then should undergrad level answers that managed to sneak in before closure also be deleted? Downvoted? Neither?