tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed ("Why was my question closed?" section in the FAQ?)

Mark Meckes comments on ""Why was my question closed?" section in the FAQ?" (4406)

2010-04-05T05:01:33-07:00

@Anton: I strongly agree with your second paragraph. FAQs and HowTos need to be as short as possible (in the same sense that Einstein said things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler).

Anton Geraschenko comments on ""Why was my question closed?" section in the FAQ?" (4394)

2010-04-04T22:53:09-07:00

There is a "why was my question closed?" section of the FAQ: http://mathoverflow.net/faq#whatnot. Sometimes questions are closed for some other reason, but those are the most common. If there are others that are common, I'm happy to add them, but there's no point in pretending to have complete knowledge of why a question might be closed. Sometimes special cases come up, in which case the right thing to do is to have a discussion about it here on meta, not to follow the FAQ to the letter as if it were some sort of holy document.

In general, I'm wary of making the FAQ or the HowToAsk page any longer. I get the impression that few people read them, and making them longer would only ensure that few people will ever read them.

sean tilson comments on ""Why was my question closed?" section in the FAQ?" (4393)

2010-04-04T22:45:21-07:00

seems like no one is discussing this kevin... i am slightly disappointed because this question led to a possible serious issue for me. the failure of the mittag-leffler condition to imply the vanishing of the lim^1 term is serious! so this question was very helpful in that regard, depending on the article that is.

Kevin Lin comments on ""Why was my question closed?" section in the FAQ?" (3813)

2010-03-12T12:50:25-08:00

I think that a section titled "Why was my question closed?" should be added to the FAQ, especially now that apparently Scott is taking the initiative and closing questions like this.