tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Functional Thinking versus Creative Thinking)

sigfpe comments on "Functional Thinking versus Creative Thinking" (5959)

sigfpe — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 07:19:04 -0700

@Anton Well that's good news about the tag. I was worried that the place had just become flooded worse than it looked.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Functional Thinking versus Creative Thinking" (5953)

Anton Geraschenko — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:32:10 -0700

I sent an email to John Jones. I don't have any reason to believe that he is intentionally trolling. It looks like he just doesn't yet understand what MathOverflow is for and how it's supposed to work. I asked him to look over the how to ask page and the FAQ before asking more questions. I also invited him to come have a look at meta.

14 closed questions on the front page last time I counted.

That's not because more questions were being closed. It's because some people were retagging old closed questions, which caused them to be bumped to the front page.

sigfpe comments on "Functional Thinking versus Creative Thinking" (5941)

sigfpe — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:03:51 -0700

> Why are there so many bad questions lately?

Because (1) the news about MO has now reached well beyond the set of mathematicians and (2) there is still very little on the front page to indicate what is appropriate to ask here.

14 closed questions on the front page last time I counted.

François G. Dorais comments on "Functional Thinking versus Creative Thinking" (5940)

François G. Dorais — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 17:55:25 -0700

That sounds reasonable, Will. I paused before voting to close on the last one as a guard against the irritation factor. I still voted to close since the question is simply too discussiony. That said, I think some of JJ's questions could be fine if they were asked differently — we saw that with question 27344 — but it seems that JJ is reluctant to learn from experience.

Will Jagy comments on "Functional Thinking versus Creative Thinking" (5939)

Will Jagy — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 17:37:59 -0700

Hi Francois. On the similar meta on "Excessively vague questions" Pete Clark and Anton were uncomfortable with my part in this, and Anton suggested flagging problem questions in general. I did that with the new one and simply indicated this thread (you get to type in a half-length comment). So, we will see what happens with this flagging process. I cannot tell what kind of feedback there will be for me.

François G. Dorais comments on "Functional Thinking versus Creative Thinking" (5938)

François G. Dorais — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 17:03:35 -0700

Here's another one!

Gjergji comments on "Functional Thinking versus Creative Thinking" (5865)

Gjergji — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:34:28 -0700

I agree that this is getting a little annoying. In case it gets worse maybe the mods (or 10K+'s) can consider using the power of deleting closed questions, at least in the cases where they are close to duplicates.

Harry Gindi comments on "Functional Thinking versus Creative Thinking" (5863)

Harry Gindi — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:46:19 -0700

Meanwhile, this is the same pattern as the original troll. He started out by asking vague crappy one-line questions until he started just posting spam.

François G. Dorais comments on "Functional Thinking versus Creative Thinking" (5859)

François G. Dorais — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:17:08 -0700

Good point Will. It's worth investigating.

Will Jagy comments on "Functional Thinking versus Creative Thinking" (5858)

Will Jagy — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:14:06 -0700

Hi, I just put a note to another thread, suggesting checking whether John Jones is a known bad guy. For the first time it occurred to me that somebody might get off by asking a divisive question and watching the discord develop. Certainly the impression one gets from 27344 on handouts.

François G. Dorais comments on "Functional Thinking versus Creative Thinking" (5857)

François G. Dorais — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:03:28 -0700

Question 27542 is yet another question of the same type as "Problem Solver versus Problem Finder [closed]" 27491. This is getting close to irritating...

Aside: Why are there so many bad questions lately?