Timeline for What are the qualities of a good Question?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
27 events
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:56 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/ with https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/
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| Mar 16, 2017 at 15:49 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://meta.mathematica.stackexchange.com/ with https://mathematica.meta.stackexchange.com/
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| Feb 19, 2015 at 21:36 | comment | added | a06e | @Mr.Wizard The question is already beneficial as it is, so maybe it's best not to touch it. My comment was just to highlight the irony ;) | |
| Feb 19, 2015 at 21:26 | comment | added | Mr.Wizard Mod | @becko That's true. I also never returned to it despite my stated intention to. I wrote it this way as I was seeking a community review of my ideas. Do you feel that posting the body of this in an answer would be beneficial? I am not sure. | |
| Feb 19, 2015 at 21:22 | comment | added | a06e | I just want to remark that you have basically proposed an answer to this meta question in the question, instead of posting an answer. ;) | |
| May 30, 2014 at 12:03 | history | edited | Mr.WizardMod |
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| May 17, 2014 at 14:17 | comment | added | Öskå | Shouldn't questions with a lack of effort but yet interesting be edited to Community Wiki questions? Then the website would have an interesting Q&A but the OP wouldn't get credit for it. | |
| May 16, 2014 at 19:12 | comment | added | Yves Klett | @SimonWoods your numerous excellent answers alone make a strong case for your argument. | |
| May 15, 2014 at 21:17 | comment | added | Simon Woods | I agree that "showing what you tried" should not be a considered a requirement for questions, and that in many cases doing so would actually lower the quality of the question. I certainly don't want people to start including large blocks of useless code for the sole purpose of proving that they tried something. | |
| May 15, 2014 at 19:16 | comment | added | C. E. Mod | @rasher Well what if they aren't? That's the point here isn't it. There are questions that aren't covered by the caveats because they are interesting and conceptual, but stil the user didn't put forth any of his own attempts at solving the problem. IMO no one is proposing anything that would turn the community into a mechanical turk site. | |
| May 15, 2014 at 7:57 | answer | added | s.s.o | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 15, 2014 at 0:17 | comment | added | ciao | I frequent this site because of its "I have a problem involving Mathematica..." and not a "I have a problem, solve it for me using Mathematica..." bent. If it becomes a mechanical turk site (which most zero-effort questions imply), not nearly as interesting (or useful), IMHO. | |
| May 14, 2014 at 22:40 | answer | added | m_goldberg | timeline score: 8 | |
| May 14, 2014 at 21:42 | history | edited | Mr.WizardMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 14, 2014 at 18:45 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackMma/status/466650555382001666 | ||
| May 14, 2014 at 17:58 | comment | added | Yves Klett | @Mr.Wizard no prob. I like my fun question just like the next man, but for some reason this one did not ring my bell, perhaps because we had several streaks of LQ questions and I still had not had a decent cuppa. | |
| May 14, 2014 at 17:56 | comment | added | Mr.Wizard Mod | @Yves I'm sincerely sorry if I in any way seemed to be "calling you out" about this; perhaps I shouldn't have referenced that question at all but I worried that a nebulous question might be open to even more inferences. I don't mean to be accusatory. This post simply served a nucleation point for something I've been pondering for a while. | |
| May 14, 2014 at 17:52 | history | edited | Mr.WizardMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 14, 2014 at 17:51 | comment | added | Yves Klett | Just for the record: The reason for my first comment on the referred question was that is was really very short and IMO too broad and looked like a pasted assignment. The OP really took that badly, and I have to agree that I did not sound very empathic (my bad). Now, essentially the question is interesting and the OP got my upvote on his other circle packing question long ago (even though with hindsight the modus operandi is similar). | |
| May 14, 2014 at 17:31 | comment | added | rm -rf Mod | I'll also make a point that I do not necessarily think that "no effort but interesting" questions are bad. I've always considered them to be things we let slide either because it is written really well or it is by someone who has a long history of helping others or posting useful questions that aren't all "do this for me" (see my comment here). Vivid's question fits neither of them, and I suspect a lot of users feel that way. | |
| May 14, 2014 at 17:23 | comment | added | Mr.Wizard Mod | @rm-rf (3) I certainly agree we must balance the personal and the mechanical and perhaps I didn't make that clear enough in this post? (4) Addressing all of your second comment will take more than this comment, but briefly: moderation falls outside of the normal operation of the site; we are here specifically to deal with cases that are breaking the system as it were. I don't understand what you're getting at with: "... not immediately delete a closed and unsalvageable question if someone has taken the effort to help the OP and has an upvoted answer?" | |
| May 14, 2014 at 17:23 | comment | added | rm -rf Mod | Yes, I was referring to the "program development", because I feel all the examples above fall in that category | |
| May 14, 2014 at 17:21 | comment | added | rm -rf Mod | All these are because sometimes, the best way to focus on the "mechanics" is to ensure that the "personal" part is not in the way, and this won't happen if we choose to ignore it. The comments and the downvotes on the question currently under focus indicate that the community has a problem with no-effort posters and perhaps this poster in particular, even though their questions are interesting. | |
| May 14, 2014 at 17:18 | comment | added | Mr.Wizard Mod | @rm-rf Thank you, as always, for your valued feedback. (1) The title was meant to open the floor for someone else to argue his qualities of a good question; perhaps not well done. (2) Regarding the other post, I think that addresses a different category of Questions than I (intended to) do here. In fact from this stance I could argue that "debugging services" don't even belong on this site as they likely don't have future value, though I won't argue that at this time. If "program development" happens to be of broad interest and reasonable scope I shall argue that it is acceptable. | |
| May 14, 2014 at 17:17 | comment | added | rm -rf Mod | Why do we suspend users who regularly ask poor questions instead of just treating each question independently (without considering the asker or their history) and just close, delete and move on? Why do we not immediately delete a closed and unsalvageable question if someone has taken the effort to help the OP and has an upvoted answer? (I usually wait for the community to start casting delete votes.) Why do we keep asking poor formatters to edit their posts (with decreasing patience with increasing clumsiness) instead of treating each post as a new post that needs tidying? | |
| May 14, 2014 at 17:11 | comment | added | rm -rf Mod | Your title doesn't quite reflect the contents of the body of the post, but most of what you're getting at seems to have been discussed in this question, although you certainly do approach the issue more compassionately. I don't think my views are any different though... I don't think you can disentangle the "personal" part and focus only on the "mechanics" part as you seem to suggest. We'll have to focus towards the "mechanics" of the site while balancing the "personal" aspects of it. | |
| May 14, 2014 at 16:43 | history | asked | Mr.WizardMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |