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Etiquette: Blanket dismissive statement with zero content

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    • CommentAuthordavidk01
    • CommentTimeDec 10th 2009 edited
     
    I am getting tired of several people consistently polluting the comments with statements of the form: "This is not for MO", "This is inappropriate for MO", "I think this is inappropriate for MO, please read the FAQ", etc. without any explanation of why it is inappropriate or links to some other resources. Quite frankly, these kinds of comments run against the mathematician's nature to share and educate so a few people consistently commenting in a such way paints a bad community image.

    If you think it is inappropriate give an explicit reason of why. Pointing to the FAQ is completely useless unless you give a concrete reason. This way we can collect some of the good reasons for why something is inappropriate and expand the FAQ to make it easier for people to judge for themselves if something is appropriate or not.
  2.  
    The FAQ is too vague to give you a reason, we're forced to use our mathematician's inuition, to recycle a quote, "Bad questions are like pornography; you know em when you see em."

    Also, I realize that you've been registered for a while but have only become active in the past week or two, but if you try to look at topics that are closed by the moderators, you'll get an idea of why we post things like that. Their moderation kinda gives us a model to go by. If you go word for word by the FAQ, then a question about boxing scores is fine as long as a sizeable portion of mathematicians are interested in boxing. The point is that things like data analysis might be of interest to some mathematicians, but it's not in the spirit of this site. I feel like this site should be a place where mathematicians can get mathematically important information that can't be found anywhere else on the internet. I myself do a decent amount of looking and searching and asking other places before I post here, because if I can find it in a reasonable amount of time, it's probably not interesting. That's the standard I try to hold myself to, and that's the standard that I hold others to.
    • CommentAuthordavidk01
    • CommentTimeDec 10th 2009 edited
     
    Great quote, with zero content as usual. Please don't pretend to speak of "spirit of the site" and other such matters. So next time you think something is inappropriate you should provide a google link. None of your comments are as helpful as your remark indicates.
    • CommentAuthorHarry Gindi
    • CommentTimeDec 10th 2009 edited
     
    When I post a comment, I generally don't look all over the internet to check that I'm right. I only do that for questions formally asked through the, "Ask a question" form.

    Also, if you liked that quote, I've got some more:

    How about, "Bad questions are like episodes of the A-team; if you've seen one, you've seen em all."

    or "Bad questions are like zerglings: They're everywhere!!!!!!!!"

    "Bad questions are like Spawn: They're back, with a vengeance!"

    "Bad questions are like Chuck Norris: They've had too many unfunny jokes made about them."

    I've got a million, but wait, one last one.

    "(-1) This topic is not appropriate for meta, please read the FAQ."
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    I agree with davidk01. When a question is inappropriate for MO, we should leave a comment making it as clear as possible why the question is inappropriate, and refer to specific parts of the FAQ. In the long run, it's less effort and frustration for everybody to carefully explain why questions are inappropriate. I confess that a couple of times I've neglected to do this myself, but I like to think I'm usually pretty good about stating specifically what's wrong with the question.

    Though I'd like people to specifically address the inappropriate question, here's a list of basic reasons for closing a question (see this section of the FAQ for more details):

    • MO is not for homework help.
    • MO is not a discussion forum.
    • MO is not an encyclopedia (i.e. question needs to be more specific)
    • Question belongs on meta.MO.
    • Question is subjective, argumentative, or inflammatory.
    • (Edit) Question is a duplicate of a previously asked question.
    • Question is not well-formed or is not a real question.
    • Question is not of interest to mathematicians or is only tangentially of interest (elementary-level education or computer questions, for example).

    Are there any that I've left out? Are there any that need further elaboration?

    • CommentAuthorHarry Gindi
    • CommentTimeDec 10th 2009 edited
     
    The last one is where the ambiguity lies. This is my process for deciding whether or not to downvote a question based on the last criterion (it has to fail all of these [in the proper way, of course. That is, don't naively put in yes and no.]):

    0. ) Do I understand this question?
    1. ) Is this question of interest to me?
    2. ) Maybe I'm just being picky. Would any mathmaticians who I personally know find this interesting?
    3. ) Have questions like this one been closed by the staff before?
    4. ) Can I trust that this person has read the FAQ?
    5. ) Is the person asking the question a mathematician?
    6. ) Downvote!

    I feel like that's a pretty fair process for downvoting based on the last criterion, but I guess you should clarify or tell me what to do, since apparently the way I do things pisses some people off (davidk01, for instance).
    • CommentAuthordavidk01
    • CommentTimeDec 10th 2009 edited
     
    I don't get angry when people downvote and provide appropriate reasons. What angers me is some people poison the well from the beginning without giving the question adequate time to settle in and for comments of the form "can you clarify what you mean by so and so", "have you considered this and that", "do you really mean this or do you mean that?" to be posted. Such comments often times clarify the posters question at which point people with more expertise can decide on the relative validity and mathematical content of the question. Whereas some non-experts dismiss the question right off the bat with complete disregard for the posters actual intention which admittedly might not be so clear initially. There is a reason questions can be revised and this is a good thing.
  8.  
    From the FAQ:

    The primary criterion for determining whether a question is appropriate for Math Overflow is "is this of interest to mathematicians?" By a "mathematician," we mean a person whose primary occupation is doing mathematics. Of course, you should make your question detailed and specific, and write clearly and simply.

    You should note the clearly and simply part. If the question is unclear and it gets voted down for that reason, then that is the questioner's fault. This usually happens when the question both \emph{appears} to be uninteresting and is also unclear. The perfect storm is when this kind of question is posted by someone with 1 rep. Those are the kinds of questions that I flippantly downrate and make these so-called "unhelpful" comments on.
    • CommentAuthordavidk01
    • CommentTimeDec 10th 2009 edited
     
    Well, even more reason to provide constructive comments to these "newbies" that you are so fond of bashing. The point is to let people know that there are certain standards that the community expects of all its participants which newcomers might not be aware of or even if they are aware of them they might not initially take them seriously. The point is not to discourage people but to make sure they know that there is a resource and educate them on how to use this resource.
  10.  
    "This question doesn't belong on Mathoverflow, please read the FAQ." There, that's an explanation and a resource, but you said that was a blanket dismissive statement with zero content.
  11.  
    A possible reason for closing which you left out: This question has been asked and answered before. Hasn't come up much yet, but it's a frequent reason for closing on Stack Overflow, and will probably come up more as time goes on.
  12.  

    @David: good point, I'll add that to the list.

    • CommentAuthordavidk01
    • CommentTimeDec 10th 2009
     
    @Harry Gindi: I don't think I can be any more clear. Your comment is kinda like telling a first time soccer player, "It's a sport that Europeans play. Go watch some videos and come back when you know how to play". It just sounds ridiculous and that is not how coaches introduce the game to first time players. They explain to them the object of the game and what rules to follow and if someone messes up the experienced players point out the mistake and tell them to try something differently. This is my last comment. I'm getting tired of reiterating my points.
  14.  
    Except posting good questions is something that you learn by watching rather than learn by doing.
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    I have to say that while I think Harry is often overly abrasive in his comments (I tar myself with the same brush -- you can certainly find examples of me being impatient on MO), "This question doesn't belong on Mathoverflow, please read the FAQ." is often actually a pretty appropriate comment to make, and I don't think we can complain too much about someone who says this.

    Mathoverflow is not intended for everyone.

    Now -- you can of course do much better than just leaving this sort of comment. (And leaving offensive or rude comments is unacceptable.) Many people include links to Art of Problem Solving when they suggest a question is inappropriate, and that's often helpful.

    I think at the moment the community being hostile to newcomers is a much much bigger problem than people asking inappropriate questions. These are still happening at an extremely low level. If you're bother by the current rate of off-topic questions, I'd suggest you slow down your use of the site, perhaps restrict your attention to some interesting tags, and spend more time asking and answering real mathematics than trying to keep an eye on the whole site and dealing with the moderation problems.

    Essentially -- given that at the moment we have plenty of enthusiasm for moderators, and not that much need for it, I hope that the calmest, politest and most helpful moderators can be left to do the good job they are doing, and those who get riled up by inappropriate questions can make their life a happier one by ignoring them! :-)

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