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Community: Excessively vague questions

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    I'm rather surprised that I'm the only vote to close on this question. It reads like the questioner is trying to give a second-hand account of something he hasn't attempted to research himself and is grasping at straws in order to do so. The question has received three votes up (and three votes down) and has somehow managed to survive closure. I'm interested in hearing what some of you who have thusfar granted the question a stay of execution have to say.

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    Maybe people enjoy watching MO's most reputable user spar in the comments with someone who is both more knowledgeable and more opinionated than he? (I think I'm winning this one on points, but I fear the knockout blow.)

    Seriously: yes, the question is prohibitively vague at the moment. I don't understand what the OP is asking for. But it has the formal trappings of a question of interest to research mathematicians, and it comes from a user who has asked plenty of other questions in the past, mostly rather reasonable ones. So I at least am operating under the default assumption that there is a real question here that just hasn't yet been properly communicated. I feel that the poster deserves to be given some (Eastern Time Zone) daylight hours to revise and clarify the question.
    • CommentAuthorHarry Gindi
    • CommentTimeMay 31st 2010 edited
     

    In the past few days, I've noticed the same user asking similarly vague questions (five in the past two hours), none of which are very well-written.

    I would suggest that he read the "How to ask" page (and maybe that he also slow down with the posts; he has made six this morning alone), but I have a bad track record with these sorts of things, so maybe someone else could handle it?

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    The OP doesn't seem to have taken part in that discussion any further so, by my reckoning, it's a Bad Question for MO.

    • CommentAuthorHarry Gindi
    • CommentTimeMay 31st 2010 edited
     

    I suspect that the OP is just posting lots of threads to get points. If you look at his profile, you can see that he has accepted an answer on a very small number of his questions. This leads me to believe that he is posting and not returning to check the answers.

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    I've voted to close and left a comment explaining why (along with a link to this thread and to the How to Ask page).

    I at least am operating under the default assumption that there is a real question here that just hasn't yet been properly communicated. I feel that the poster deserves to be given some (Eastern Time Zone) daylight hours to revise and clarify the question.

    I wish I could add "needs revision" as a reason for closing. That way it would be perfectly clear that closing is a reversible procedure and is perfectly appropriate for prohibitively vague questions.

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    @Anton: that would be a nice improvement. Anyway, if it is not already clear, I believe the OP has had plenty of time to modify the question and has chosen not to do so. (Rather s/he has chosen to ask many more questions, some of which I agree are "excessively vague", others "subjective and argumentative".)
    • CommentAuthorVP
    • CommentTimeMay 31st 2010
     

    FWIW, I believe that it's the same person as akela. At the very least, similarities in the style of their questions and some elements of their conduct (for example, accepting a minuscule proportion of the answers) are truly eerie.

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    @VP: I'm not so sure that I agree. The user akela appears to have actively engaged the people answering his/her questions and provided some more background. Also, akela has accepted answers for the majority of his/her questions, so I don't see the resemblance you've cited.

    • CommentAuthorVP
    • CommentTimeMay 31st 2010 edited
     
    This replaces a reply to Harry Gindi that is no longer relevant.
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    [Comments that seem to have been premised on some sort of misunderstanding deleted.]

    On the topic of "I suspect user X is the same as user Y": please refrain. It's not helpful, and it's certainly not necessary: moderators have a lot more information available than we do, so such identifications are best left to them. If you feel that you have spotted a "sock puppet" issue -- i.e., multiple accounts by the same person being used in an inappropriate way -- please contact the moderators privately.
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    I thought "Negative refraction" used to be known as "Roland Sands"? (I remember that guy changing his username several times and I dimly recall that he might have settled on "Negative refraction" in the end. But it's quite possible I'm getting befuddled here.)

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    Yemon is right. "Moonbeam Flowerbunny" was the original name I think, and "Mathoverflow hater" was another between "Roland Sands" and "Negative refraction".
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    Wasn't Moonbeam Flowerbunny one of the accounts involved in "Trollstorm 2010"?

    • CommentAuthorVP
    • CommentTimeJun 3rd 2010 edited
     

    This replaces an obsolete response to Pete Clark

    • CommentAuthorWill Jagy
    • CommentTimeJun 8th 2010
     
    Any way to check whether the new John Jones is the same person as either Negative Refraction or Akela? There appears to be a motive, which is to cause the maximum arguing and discord among, well, you folks, and Andrew L., Deane Yang, etc.
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    @Will: as I understand it, the moderators can look into this (at least in many cases, if not in all). If you have concerns about this, an email to (e.g.) Anton G. or Scott M. is probably the way to go.

    For what little it's worth, I don't find the idea that there is a unique nefarious party behind these not so great questions either very alarming or very likely. For me, it would be nice to think that all off-topic, potentially divisive questions are being asked by the same person, but I'm inclined to doubt it.
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    It's more likely that there's been a change in our traffic, possibly caused by a high-profile link somewhere. Anton has access to the Google analytics, so he might be able to find out whether that's the case.

    • CommentAuthorWill Jagy
    • CommentTimeJun 8th 2010
     
    Hi Pete. I think that it was the giant argument to the question on handouts that caught my eye. That and the fact that the user started two days ago. There are clearly plenty of other people asking divisive questions. And I take your point about alternate procedures.
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    There does seem to be a pattern of a few users asking increasingly provocative
    questions culminating in blatant trolling. Alas, as MO is growing and gathering
    more attention I suspect we will see more trolling/flaming/spamming. I used
    to be active in the sci.math newsgroup, but gave up largely due to the
    diminishing signal/noise ratio. In order for MO not to go the same way we need
    to be determined to clamp down on these negative behaviours. It may be worth
    investigating whether miscreant users have similar patterns of activity on other forums.
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    +1, Robin.

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    I would love to see some numbers. Has the number of bad questions increased much? Has the number of soft questions increased much? My impression is yes, but I may very well be wrong.

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    @Will: as I understand it, the moderators can look into this (at least in many cases, if not in all). If you have concerns about this, an email to (e.g.) Anton G. or Scott M. is probably the way to go.

    I second that. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is uncomfortable with public guesses that two users are the same person. Another thing you can do is flag something for moderator attention, but that comes with a tight character limit.

    I would love to see some numbers. Has the number of bad questions increased much? Has the number of soft questions increased much? My impression is yes, but I may very well be wrong.

    I happened to grab a fresh database dump just now for another reason. Here's a list of how many questions were closed on any given day in MO history up to today. It doesn't look like things have been especially bad recently, but I haven't looked at it very carefully.

    • CommentAuthorMark Meckes
    • CommentTimeJun 9th 2010 edited
     

    Here is a smoothed out graph of the list Anton just provided. The data points are one-week averages. It looks like there's been a recent spike of closed questions, but there have been many and this one is not much worse than most others.

    • CommentAuthorWill Jagy
    • CommentTimeJun 9th 2010
     
    The first time I read this thread, I mostly noticed only Yemon Choi, Jonas Meyer, and Harry Gindi on June 1st. I simply did not realize that Pete's earlier post on the same day went in a quite different direction.

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