Timeline for Should we exercise a bit more tolerance towards newcomers?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 24, 2017 at 13:14 | comment | added | Martin Sleziak | I think it is generally agreed that if a question is off-topic, then it should not be answered (i.e., answer should not be posted for off-topic questions, posting comments is probably ok). But if a question is on-topic, answers should be posted as answers, not as comments. | |
| Dec 24, 2017 at 13:13 | comment | added | Martin Sleziak | @DavidSpeyer (and Will Sawin) - I thought this was implied but to make it clearer: I was talking about questions which do not belong on the site - so they should be closed and deleted anyway. But some users want MO to be a bit more welcoming (as at least voting on fedja's post suggest so), so apart from the message that the questions belongs elsewhere, they might want to nudge the user towards answer at least in comments. | |
| Dec 22, 2017 at 21:47 | comment | added | Will Sawin | @DavidSpeyer I agree that if a question is answered in the comments, it should almost always either have an answer written and accepted explaining the comments, or else be closed. This can be consistent with answers sometimes appearing in the comments, e..g if the answer is only one sentence but you are not sure if it is correct or if the asker wants to change the question, as long as you or someone else follows up later. | |
| Dec 22, 2017 at 20:46 | comment | added | David E Speyer | The advantage of giving an answer is that it no longer shows up in the unanswered list. I will sometimes think "I feel like solving number theory problems" today and go hunting through the unanswered list, and it is a bit annoying to run into all the old questions with answers in comments. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 6:13 | comment | added | Martin Sleziak | Re: with full answers or in the comments. The advantage of posting a short answer (or pointer to where answer can be found) in a comment rather than in an answer is that once a question has an answer and the answer gets positive score, it is no longer removable by roomba. | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 21:19 | comment | added | Will Sawin | @GerhardPaseman I must confess I don't fully understand what you are trying to say, and how it relates to Anton's comments. In terms of noise, noise is handled by closing, migrating, or deleting inappropriate questions, and I don't think it matters very much what happens with them before that. However there is an interesting conflict between the signal-to-noise ratio and fedja's suggestion that questions not be closed / migrated / deleted too quickly, that I am not sure how to resolve. | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 21:15 | comment | added | Will Sawin | @AntonFetisov You may be right, but I think that is a separate discussion, on the merits of answering in the comments vs. writing an answer. Many people do answer questions in the comments, or give partial answers / hints, and it is certainly possible to do so in a polite and friendly manner. | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 20:28 | comment | added | Gerhard Paseman | Even though I do not identify MathOverflow with a StackExchange site (and in other situations I would challenge Anton Fetisov's comment in more than one way), I agree with the intent of the comment: this forum works well because the signal to noise ratio is high. While such questions and comments redirecting the posters are not noise, they are part of what we do not want much of and need to manage their quantity. Not answering questions may be impolite, but answering them on this forum may also be impolite. Gerhard "Learning To Manage Impoliteness Politely" Paseman, 2017.12.16. | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 19:53 | comment | added | Anton Fetisov | Answering questions in the comments is against the rules of Stackexchange sites and should be discouraged, not encouraged. While I'm happy that the rules about answers in comments and discussions isn't enforced on MO as violently as on other sites, the fact stands that it undermines the core principles of the system: visible usable answers and threads in Q&A format. | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 18:21 | history | answered | Will Sawin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |