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Is this question acceptable?: Flood of questions from an open problem list

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    We've just recently had a flood an questions asked by Martin Erickson, which have been causing some upset. Martin is a professor at Truman University at Missouri, and all of his questions come from an open problems list at his webpage.

    Some of his questions have been receiving downvotes, I presume on the basis of not having any motivation or background, and one has been closed. Should we do anything about this? I've contacted him privately by email to see if it's possible to discuss the situation. In part I'll try to ensure that he's not upset by the downvotes or closure, but ideally I'd also like to be able to encourage him to "fix" the questions. I'm not sure what exactly that would entail, so suggestions are welcome here.

    I think the two main problems that cause the downvotes, votes to close and flags for moderator attention were:

    1. The rapidity of posting --- it's somehow contravenes the intent of the site, and in this case meant that we couldn't intervene after the first few questions and explain 2):
    2. The lack of motivation or background in the questions.
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    I flagged one post, but did not downvote any of them and only voted to close one question (about Bernoulli stuff). I think these questions are mostly OK (the lack of motivation or background, while lamentable, is not grounds to close or downvote most of them) in vacuo, but the rate of posting is the thing. I hope and believe that Prof Erickson will understand.

    I don't see how this sort of thing is something that can be fixed by a feature without breaking the site. Forcing users to wait increasing periods before posting additional questions can't keep a determined person from starting new accounts. Forcing new posters to read the FAQ won't work either (think of "click-through" EULAs for software). However a cultural note might be appropriate for the FAQ.
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    There actually used to be a throttle in the earlier beta's, but the Stack Exchange people took it out at some point.

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    I think this was just an unfortunate misunderstanding. There's no need for all the downvotes and closure; at least the questions have actual mathematical content.

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    I voted to close all of them before the comment about him being a professor was posted. I thought it was spam and flagged it as such. Sorry, Martin!

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    I think most of Prof. Erickson's questions are fine. (The only one I saw and thought was lacking is the one where he writes down the (well-known, easily derived) formula for the number of bases of a finite dimensional vector space over a finite field of order q and asks for a combinatorial interpretation of this quantity when q is not a prime power. That doesn't feel like a "real question" to me.)

    It has been pretty well established here that motivation is desirable (and is a good strategy for garnering upvotes) but certainly not necessary: some have even expressed a preference for laconic presentation.

    Nor do I see how a set of questions which are individually okay and not closely related to each other could be collectively problematic.

    Overall, it seems that Prof. Erickson deserves a somewhat warmer welcome to MO than he has so far received.
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    Nor do I see how a set of questions which are individually okay and not closely related to each other could be collectively problematic.

    What if I posted 50 questions at the same time and pushed everybody else off the front page? Sorry, but you were just begging for the reductio ad absurdum. I agree that posting 9 questions is not a huge deal, but the very fact that people have a negative visceral reaction to it is an argument that it is unwise to do so, though probably not worth intervening with.

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    Forcing users to wait increasing periods before posting additional questions can't keep a determined person from starting new accounts.

    But it might let the inexperienced user know that posting several questions at a time is discouraged.

    • CommentAuthorjbl
    • CommentTimeJun 27th 2010
     
    Should someone perhaps tag the problems as open problems?
    • CommentAuthorVP
    • CommentTimeJun 28th 2010
     

    Getting 300 plus points and multiple answers and comments within a day or so seems plenty of evidence of warm welcome to me!

    I've seen the term "fishing expedition" indiscriminately bandied about lately, but this comes closest to where it actually applies: posting a whole bunch of questions because... well, because you can! I've been following one them where there were requests for clarification and answers, but no response from the OP. It's probably a culture shock issue, which means that it needs to be addressed on the level of policy, because similar multiple postings with no feedback have occurred before and are bound to occur again. Is this sort of thing considered OK? If it is not, as judged by the reaction, this needs to be codified somehow and dealt with in a polite but non-obsequious way.

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