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Community: what constitutes an "answer?"

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    • CommentAuthorj0equ1nn
    • CommentTimeMar 20th 2013
     
    I'm new here, I expect this will be easy for someone to clear up for me.

    I answered a question for the first time on Mathoverflow. The next day I signed in to see what folks thought about it. I looked at my profile and next to "answers" it said 0. However next to "votes" it said 1 with an up arrow indicated. But there was no link to the answer I posted. I had to remember what I had typed on Google to find the question in the first place in order to find my answer, and saw that it had received an up vote, which I presume is what the 1 next to "votes" meant. But why is my answer not registering as an answer? Does "answer" on one's profile actually mean the asker's favorite answer?

    This is unrelated, but I was also confused about having to set up a membership for meta.mathoverflow separately from having a membership to regular mathoverflow. I just entered the same username and filled the thing out, but is there some reason for this?
  2.  

    Do you remember what kind of question your answer was to? There's several things that could have happened but it would be helpful if you included a link to the question.

    • CommentAuthorgrp
    • CommentTimeMar 20th 2013
     
    The most likely scenario, in my view, is that you have more than one account on the main forum site itself. I would explore that option first. If you do not find the answer still after looking at the questions, you can email the moderators@ directly.

    Gerhard "Ask Me About Multiple Accounts" Paseman, 2013.03.20
    • CommentAuthorgrp
    • CommentTimeMar 20th 2013
     
    Here is a second idea. Comments are also upvoted. It is conceivable that you are confusing comments with answers. Your recent tab on your user page indicates such activity. Also the vote tally on your page below the answer list is for votes you made using this account, not for votes others made.

    The above idea of confusion is just speculation. As Ryan mentioned, locating the answer is most helpful; clicking on the user link for the answer will likely clear up most mysteries.

    Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2013.03.20
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    Unless j0qu1nn tells us what that question was, probably no one can figure out which if grp's possibilities it was.

  6.  
    As far as I can tell, "votes" on your profile page means the votes you cast, on other people's questions and answers, not their votes on your questions and answers. So I would lean toward grp's first idea, that your answer came from a different account than the profile you looked at.
    • CommentAuthorj0equ1nn
    • CommentTimeMar 21st 2013
     
    It was a duplicate account issue. In fact, not only had I inadvertently set up a separate account when I posted my answer, but I had set it up on a different website - math.stackexchange.com. In my defense, the site is set up in exactly the same way and I couldn't tell the difference, but now I understand what the difference is. Thanks for the quick replies though.

    So... how about my other question? What's the rational behind needing to set up a separate account on meta.mathoverflow from the one a person has on mathoverflow? I chose the same userID in both places, but is there some reason why I wouldn't want people to know I'm the same person as I am when talking about math stuff? Or is this technically not part of the same site?

    And another question for ya. Sorry I'm so disoriented here. I was trying to go back to this discussion to fill in the folks who tried to help me on what my issue was, and I could find no link to the discussion I started. I had to google the website name and my userID to find this discussion again. Surely there is a menu somewhere giving one access to the discussions they are involved in, yes?

    I hope I'm not being too annoying with these technical issues, I've just recently discovered how amazing mathoverflow is, I couldn't believe how quickly knowledgeable people engage me about really specific math concepts I'm working on.
  8.  

    You answered your own question:

    This is unrelated, but I was also confused about having to set up a membership for meta.mathoverflow separately from having a membership to regular mathoverflow. I just entered the same username and filled the thing out, but is there some reason for this?

    Or is this technically not part of the same site?

    MathOverflow runs on old StackExchange software and in the old system there was no separate meta site. So an independent forum was set up ("independent" technically, but run by the moderators of MO). That's why you need a separate login.

    I was trying to go back to this discussion to fill in the folks who tried to help me on what my issue was, and I could find no link to the discussion I started.

    There's a link to meta at the top of the MathOverflow page, next to the "how to ask" link. Were you back on the Maths-SX site again?

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